So, the Democrats said that the surge was a failure because the Iraqis were not meeting the political benchmarks. Well, they just met one of them yesterday:

Iraq’s parliament voted on Saturday to let thousands of members of Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party return to government jobs, winning praise from Washington for achieving a benchmark step toward reconciling warring sects.

The law is the first of a series of measures that Washington has long been pressing the Shi’ite Islamist-led government to pass in an effort to draw the minority Sunni Arab community that held sway under Saddam closer into the political process.
“This law preserves the rights of the Iraqi people after the crimes committed by the Baath Party while also benefiting the innocent members of the party. This law provides a balance,” Iraqi government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said.
Washington had introduced “de-Baathification” when it administered Iraq in 2003-04, but later acknowledged that the measures went too far and asked Iraqi leaders to ease them.
[…]
The law is part of a wider effort to end a political deadlock that saw the main Sunni Arab bloc pull out of Shi’ite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki’s government last August.
“The law has been passed. We see it as a very good sign of progress and it will greatly benefit Baathists. It was passed smoothly and opposition was small,” said Rasheed al-Azzawi, a Sunni member of the committee which helped draft it.

Now, if the MSM would actually do their job, they would ask the political candidates if they thought the surge was working and would they be more inclined to leave the troops there while the Iraqi government continues to stabilize the country through political policy.