Fareed Zakaria:

The Democrats are having the hardest time with the new reality. Every candidate is committed to "ending the war" and bringing our troops back home. The trouble is, the war has largely ended, and precisely because our troops are in the middle of it.

Ah, those sad, sad, Democrats. So unaware that the war's over. The dude who killed at least fourteen and wounded seventeen in Tikrit must, like the Democrats, have been wearing partisan blinders when he failed to acknowledge the surge's success in bringing the war to an end. Similarly, the US military has these newish Mine-Resistant Ambush-Protected vehicles known as MRAPs. As you can tell from the name, the vehicles are designed to be resistant to roadside bombs. Only trouble is insurgents seems to have figured out how to foil them, since we had our first instance of a roadside bomb blowing up an MRAP just on Saturday.

Obviously, though, this improvement in the tactics and doctrine of anti-American fighters in Iraq can't be a big deal since the war is largely over. If the war were still happening, this kind of thing might illustrate the illusory nature of tactical improvements in the face of a bleak strategic situation. But since the war is "largely" over already there's probably no problem here.