The news that the Iraqi city of Ramadi has fallen to Islamic State will only complicate President Obama's calculation at the White House, where officials have spent several months arguing that they are winning the war against extremist forces in Iraq and Syria.
President Obama has conceded that the battle against Islamic State will outlast his Presidency.
And so those candidates vying to succeed him in the Oval Office can expect to face growing questions about their foreign policy plans.
But our Washington correspondent Simon Marks says two of the principal candidates already in the race are struggling to escape questions about their records.
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As some of the leading names in the race for the Presidency seek to talk about America's glorious future….they keep getting dragged back to its past.
Consider the case of Jeb Bush….who simply cannot escape lingering questions about his brother's decision to invade Iraq.
The first one came on Fox News…from interviewer, Megyn Kelly:
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That answer caused paroxysms of agony even among prominent Republicans.
And Governor Bush - who says he misheard the question - was soon revising it, here in a conversation with Sean Hannity.
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So…as things stand…if he knew then what he knows now, he MIGHT not have invaded Iraq.
And while that was causing complications for his Presidential calculations, a 19 year old student in Reno, Nevada decided to pile on.
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Ivy Ziedrich will be a first-time voter in November 2016…and apparently not for Governor Bush.
Surely, she suggested, he could not deny that the creation of Islamic State was a by-product of his brother's decision to wage wars in the Middle East?
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"We respectfully disagree. We have a disagreement".
TRX: Happily for Repubicans, they have a wide array of candidates to choose between….Ted Cruz, Mike Huckabee, Rand Paul, Marco Rubio, Carly Fiorina and others are already officially in race.
If the Republicans are spoiled for choice, the Democrats are not.
Only Bernie Sanders has so far formally declared his readiness to take on Hillary Clinton.
And she continues to perform strongly in the polls, despite the publication of the book "Clinton Cash" and a slew of articles raising questions about fund-raising on her watch at the Clinton Foundation…and her decision to delete 60 thousand e-mail from her private servers.
In brief comments to New Hampshire's WMUR TV…she brushed it all aside.
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And yet, while Mrs. Clinton's numbers are holding up with registered Democrats, they are sliding slightly with the all-important swing voters who will ultimately determine who wins the keys to the Oval Office.
Which is why - like Jeb Bush - she wants to stop talking about the past…and keep the attention of voters firmly fixed on America's future.
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