The U.K. Mail Online posted a story yesterday about the work of the British Special Air Service (the equivalent of American Special Forces) in bringing down two of the nastiest Al Qaeda leaders in Iraq in 2008.

Please follow the link to the article and read the entire story–it is fascinating. It combines good old fashioned detective work with undercover work and infiltration into the den of the lions.

Some of the story:

Until today the true extent of the Al Qaeda men’s murderous influence has never been revealed and neither has the extraordinary story of how they were eventually stopped.

The Mail on Sunday can disclose that it was not US special forces who finally killed Rami and captured Uthman – as was reported at the time by The Washington Post – but the SAS.

How they did so was typical of the cool efficiency for which    the regiment is renowned.

Both operations were also smart, subtle and meticulously planned, using hi-tech ingenuity. Perhaps most of all, though, they were less obvious than those of their American counterparts.

The missions took place during the SAS ‘D’ squadron’s six-month tour of Baghdad in the second half of 2008, a time when car bombers were wreaking carnage in the capital.

Documents seen by this newspaper – accounts of the tour by the regiment’s senior officers – suggest the SAS was helped by a controversial set of ‘legal freedoms’ permitting the detainment of any individual, even without  evidence to justify their captivity.

I love the British perspective. We Americans are so unsubtle!