Candidates on the Issues: Iraq

By Don Gonyea

Published July 23, 2004 at 12:00 AM EDT

The war in Iraq has polarized voters like no other issue in this presidential election year. With U.S. fatalities continuing to rise, the volatile situation in Iraq is likely to make the election outcome as unpredictable as any in history. NPR's Don Gonyea reports.

President Bush continues to defend his decision to invade Iraq, saying America is safer for having ousted Saddam Hussein. Meanwhile, Sen. John Kerry, his Democratic opponent, is trying to capitalize on polls showing a majority of Americans now believe the decision to go to war was a mistake. But it's not clear how Kerry's approach to rebuilding Iraq would differ from Bush's if he wins in November.

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.

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