David Sanger, Michael Gordon, and John Burns collaborate on a lengthy piece in today's New York Times summarizing the difficult and deteriorating situation in Iraq during 2006. It was a brutal year, no question about it.

Also worth reading is this piece from David Wood of the Baltimore Sun reporting from Ramadi on the situation in the western province of Anbar where U.S. Marines are locked in a "standoff" with al-Qaeda in Iraq:

After three years of fighting that has killed 143 American troops in Anbar province, the U.S. military has been unable to quash a vicious insurgency that shows no sign of abating.

Senior U.S. commanders, grappling with Islamist fighters through the Euphrates River towns and the dusty, wind- swept expanse of this province west of Baghdad, describe the insurgents of al-Qaida in Iraq as well-financed, well-led and elusive.

In interviews at heavily bunkered American outposts in Ramadi, Fallujah, Haditha Dam and elsewhere, the officers described the fight as a frustrating uphill battle that will require a steady commitment over many years to win. [snip]

"The issue isn't whether we can hang on," said Brig. Gen. Robert G. Neller, operations chief for Multinational Force-West, the military command for Anbar province. "The issue is whether the American people are willing to accept a long-term commitment in Iraq."

In direct firefights with insurgents, the Marines and soldiers here always prevailed. But there's no straight line from winning battles to winning the war.

"If killing people would win this, we'd have won a long time ago," said Col. William Crowe, commander of Regimental Combat Team 7, the main combat force in Anbar, where about 1,400 insurgents have been killed since June.

Working the back alleys and neighborhoods where there is no constant U.S. presence, the Sunni insurgents are waging a campaign of murder and intimidation to demonstrate that neither the Iraqi government nor U.S. forces can protect people.

"Kill one, scare one thousand," said an intelligence officer. "Anyone cooperating with us becomes a target for AQI assassination."

In Haditha, several relatives of the police chief were killed and their heads impaled on stakes for public display. A woman detonated a vest bomb at the entrance to a local university. The provincial council has fled from the capital, Ramadi, to the relative safety of Baghdad.

Other details of the article are equally grim: the Iraqi Army is underperforming, reconstruction money from the central government is being siphoned off to al-Qaeda in Iraq, etc.

If you read through to the end of the article, however, Wood finally gets around to noting some positive news as well. The Marines interviewed for the article said there are no simple answers to confronting the terrorist insurgency, but they do believe they'll prevail if given enough time. Gen. James T. Conway told Wood:

"There are two timelines: what it will take to get the job done, and what a democratic society will allow us to do the job. Our troops feel that if given a little more time, this thing will sort itself out and we'll walk out with our heads held high."

It's hard to look at a quote like that from one of our courageous and dedicated servicemen and say "no, we're not going to give you the time you need to complete the mission." On the other hand, as General Conway well knows, the public's willingness to allow more time to complete the mission is greatly effected by the perception of progress in Iraq. To the extent we aren't demonstrating that we're making progress in Iraq, or have a reasonable expectation of making progress in the near future, it becomes extremely unlikely the public, and subsequently its representatives in Congress, will grant our troops the time they need to complete the mission in Iraq - however long that might be.

RELATED: Buzztracker on NY Times Iraq story.