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The Duffel Brief · the free edition, Monday, Wednesday and Friday

Vol. 15 · No. 122 · Monday, 12 October 2026

Pentagon

Hegseth opens up new TradWife MOS

Army says new career field will allow warfighters to focus on lethality while someone else remembers the kids

DTS works properly after hack by rogue AI

Lincoln sailor returning from deployment already broke

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Vol. 15 · No. 122

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Established 2012 · Deployed worldwide

Vol. 15 · No. 122 · Deployed worldwide

Monday

12 October 2026

0817 Zulu

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← Front page
Veterans · Page 2

Veteran bashes Americans for exercising freedom incorrectly

Filed · 1538

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — Darren Coombs, a veteran of nearly two years in the US Army, thinks you are not using your freedom right and he's on a mission to explain it to you, according to former friends.

"Plain and simple: people in this country are not living up to American principles that have been around for millennia," Coombs wrote on a friend's Facebook post supporting pediatric cancer research. "This country is going to hell in a hand-basket and most definitely is not what I, or my brothers in arms, fought for 'over there.'"

Coombs, 32, says he is "an account representative" who was deployed to Iraq from 2005 – 2006. He has been lashing out on social media at no one in particular after sharing an "open letter" lambasting his countrymen for not respecting the freedom he purportedly killed numerous people for. The cryptic and fragmented tirade, replete with informal fallacies and racial slurs, lasted nearly seven hours.

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