It may never be completely irradicated but when we have a better rate of success as far as peace is concerned than we can withdrawal the majority of troops and just keep a few soldiers to respond to aiding Iraq's police and military in times of need.

Even the insurgents think this is funny.

This is all but impossible. Heck, we still have armed insurgents in the US. Once the insurgency is reduced to a certain level it becomes a local problem and outside forces must give way to internal.

It is true what people are saying, the armed resistance (as someone has pointed out, it is tough to know who the insurgents really are) well never die. There well always be a pro-Saddam group in Iraq, no matter how big, small, powerful or weak, there well always be one. However, I feel it is important for the Iraqis to defeat this resistance. Instead of America going in there, making minor mistakes that are huge international disasters. The Iraq police force has to secure Iraq, and they have to pave the way for democracy. The only way Iraq is going to survive is if they can fight their own battles.

Again, this is IMPOSSIBLE. Yes, we have killed thousands of insurgents, but you know what, they recruit more and more every day. It is simply impossible to get rid of all insurgents. I suppose next we are going to get rid of all the gang members we have here in America too right? It's not realistic at all. It sound great, and in a perfect world, it could be done (actually, in a perfect world there would be no insurgency or gang membes either but lets not get into a paradox here), but as every single human being on the face of the Earth knows, this is far from a perfect world.

It's difficult to define defeated. As Magellan points out, the insurgency will never be entirely defeated. Perhaps a more appropriate criteria would be to withdraw troops when the insurgency is reasonably contained.

I'm with Magellan here, and at this point there are no easy answers. We should never have become involved in this war, but now that we are, how do we just leave? The insurgency will never be defeated, unfortunately. Instead of quelling terrorism, we've inspired it, uniting divergent nationalistic and fundamentalist forces in Iraq, the Middle East and beyond. It isn't the anti-war kooks who are responsible for this fiasco. It's George W. and the people around him who got us into it in the first place with lies and deception. God only knows what will get us out of it.

I guess it depends on what your definition of defeated is.

It's true that the insurgency will never be completely defeated. Our only real hope is that their will might be broken before the pacifists and anti-war kooks (people like Mike Wallace, Howard Dean, Peter Jennings, Alec Baldwin, Maureen Dowd, Madeleine Albright, Sean Penn - you know the real zealots) are successful in breaking the will of the American People. Bush should be fighting this PR war much more effectively than he is.

The insurgency will never be entirely defeated.