The Senescent Man

Galley Slaves picked up on this unusually pro US military article from the Washington Post (Steve: you may have spotted this). It's about a team of fairly ruthless guys who are known as "The Violators," who make the insurgents want to run and hide. Their symbol is a skull with blood dripping from its mouth. The story begins with an ambush on the insurgents! This isn't the usual MSM fare:

MOSUL, Iraq -- From inside a vacant building, Sgt. 1st Class Domingo Ruiz watched through a rifle scope as three cars stopped on the other side of the road. A man carrying a machine gun got out and began to transfer weapons into the trunk of one of the cars.

"Take him down," Ruiz told a sniper.

The sniper fired his powerful M-14 rifle and the man's head exploded, several American soldiers recalled. As he fell, more soldiers opened fire, killing at least one other insurgent. After the ambush, the Americans scooped up a piece of skull and took it back to their base as evidence of the successful mission.

The March 12 attack -- swift and brutally violent -- bore the hallmarks of operations that have made Ruiz, 39, a former Brooklyn gang member, renowned among U.S. troops in Mosul and, in many ways, a symbol of the optimism that has pervaded the military since Iraq's Jan. 30 elections.

Read the rest here.