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Bush and Blair Field Questions on Iraq

By Don Gonyea

Published May 25, 2006 at 4:00 PM EDT

The ongoing conflict in Iraq dominated a discussion with the news media held by President Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair Thursday in Washington, D.C. At a joint news conference at the White House, neither leader moved toward a timetable for troop withdrawal.

President Bush acknowledged that he regrets some of the rhetoric he used early in the conflict, including "bring it on," calling it "kind of tough talk, you know, that sent the wrong signal to people." He said the Abu Ghraib prison scandal was "the biggest mistake that's happened."

Blair capped an impassioned defense of the mission in Iraq by saying: "So these people who are fighting us there know what is at stake. The question is, do we?"

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Don Gonyea

You're most likely to find NPR's Don Gonyea on the road, in some battleground state looking for voters to sit with him at the local lunch spot, the VFW or union hall, at a campaign rally, or at their kitchen tables to tell him what's on their minds. Through countless such conversations over the course of the year, he gets a ground-level view of American elections. Gonyea is NPR's National Political Correspondent, a position he has held since 2010. His reports can be heard on all NPR News programs and at NPR.org. To hear his sound-rich stories is akin to riding in the passenger seat of his rental car, traveling through Iowa or South Carolina or Michigan or wherever, right along with him.