Random incident or ill portent of things to come?

When I saw the headline at CNN.com stating “British troops shot as they lay on ground” I callously thought “Another day in Iraq.” This is not the case:

The execution-style killing of two British soldiers and wounding of four other people in Northern Ireland was “an attempt at mass murder,” police said Sunday. … The troops are the first British soldiers to be killed in Northern Ireland in 12 years, the Ministry of Defense confirmed.

Having spent some of my formative years in the UK, this news makes me more than a little apprehensive. I sincerely thought we were beyond all this. I guess not …