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Kerry vows to restore 'trust, credibility'
(Agencies)
Updated: 2004-07-30 11:39
US Democratic presidential Sen. John Kerry challenged President Bush's Iraq
policy in blunt, biting terms Thursday night and promised cheering Democratic
National Convention delegates, "I will be a commander in chief who will never
mislead us into war."
US Democratic presidential nominee
John Kerry speaks to delegates during the Democratic National Convention
at the FleetCenter in Boston, Thursday, July 29, 2004.
[AP] | "America can do better, and help is on the
way," the Democratic presidential nominee vowed over and over in a prime-time
acceptance speech that marked the beginning of the general election phase of his
long quest for the White House.
"Saying there are weapons of mass destruction in Iraq doesn't make it so,"
said the four-term Massachusetts senator, a decorated Vietnam War veteran
battling an incumbent president in an age of terrorism.
"Saying we can fight a war on the cheap doesn't make it so. And proclaiming
mission accomplished certainly doesn't make it so," Kerry told thousands of
delegates packed into an overheated, overcrowded FleetCenter as well as a
nationwide television audience of uncounted millions.
The hall erupted in cheers as Kerry completed his speech with a promise that,
"Our best days are still to come," and the ovation grew louder when running mate
John Edwards joined Kerry on the podium, followed by their wives and children.
Moments later, tens of thousands red, white and blue balloons and strips of
confetti beyond counting floated gently to the floor.
An hour earlier, the 60-year-old lawmaker made a triumphant entrance into the
hall for the most important speech of his political life, walking a happy
gantlet of delegates who reached out eagerly to greet him. "I'm John Kerry and
I'm reporting for duty," he said moments later from the podium - and snapped off
a salute.
In a speech salted with frequent references to patriotism and service, Kerry
said the American flag doesn't "belong to any president. It doesn't belong to
any ideology and it doesn't belong to any political party. It belongs to all the
American people."
The Democratic challenger's speech capped a four-day convention designed to
persuade millions of undecided voters in the battleground states that he is a
man tested by war and ready to assume command.
On the last evening, as on all others, nothing was left to chance - from a
new campaign video designed to show Kerry's softer side to a brief tribute from
fellow Vietnam veteran Jim Rassmann.
"John Kerry saved my life," he said simply.
Eager to strike out from their convention city, Kerry and vice presidential
running mate John Edwards depart Friday for a 3,500-mile, coast-to-coast
campaign swing through 21 states.
After spending the week at his Texas ranch, Bush resumes campaigning this
weekend with a bus tour of battleground states and a new message. "We have
turned the corner, and we are not turning back," he says in a new stump speech,
excerpts of which were obtained by The Associated Press.
Kerry began the week tied or slightly ahead of Bush in the polls, a strong
position for a challenger. Whatever sort of surge in support he receives from
four days of his highly choreographed convention, Republicans hope to counter
next month when they meet in New York to nominate Bush and Vice President Dick
Cheney for re-election.
In his speech, Kerry painted a portrait of a nation suffering economically
after four years of Republican rule.
"Wages are falling, health care costs are rising and our great middle class
is shrinking. People are working weekends; they're working two jobs, three jobs
and they're still not getting ahead," he said.
"We can do better and we will. We're the optimists," he said, and added, "We
value an America where the middle class is not being squeezed, but doing
better."
Kerry's decision to question the president over Iraq comes at a time when
Bush is struggling to reverse a decline in support for his policies in a
conflict that has claimed more than 900 lives, many of them since the president
stood on an aircraft carrier beneath a banner that proclaimed "Mission
Accomplished."
A Pew Research Center survey earlier this month showed 42 percent support for
Bush on the war, down from 59 percent six months earlier.
But Kerry expanded his criticism far beyond Iraq as he sought to draw a
contrast with the president on the national security issues he has placed at the
core of his challenge for the White House.
"In these dangerous days there is a right way and a wrong way to be strong,"
he said.
"Strength is more than tough words," Kerry added in a slap at Bush without
mentioning the commander in chief by name.
"I will immediately reform the intelligence system so policy is guided by
facts, and facts are never distorted by politics," he said in reference to
claims that the president relied on faulty intelligence in deciding to invade
Iraq in 2003.
"And as president, I will bring back this nation's time-honored tradition:
The United States of America never goes to war because we want to, we only go to
war because we have to," Kerry said.
Kerry voted in October 2002 to give Bush the authority to use military force
to topple Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, but later voted against legislation
providing $87 billion for Iraq and Afghanistan.
Kerry's convention scriptwriters supplemented the speech with a biographical
video pitched to voters who will choose a president come fall.
"My promise is to lead our country, to bring people together and take us to a
better place," the lawmaker said in the nine-minute campaign documentary.
The video also includes the first reference from the convention podium to
Kerry's emergence as a prominent anti-war activist more than three decades ago
after he returned home from Vietnam.
Bush's GOP surrogates kept up their weeklong criticism of the Kerry-Edwards
ticket in terms likely to recur throughout their own convention.
"Everything and anything has been discussed but their record," said former
New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani of the Democrats, joining a string of
Republicans accusing Kerry of trying to obscure a career-long record of
liberalism.
The convention's final evening was as rigorously scripted, designed to flesh
out Kerry's biography and emphasize his experience as a decorated veteran.
The video was part of the effort to shed Kerry's image as an aloof
politician, casting him as an athlete and a musician, a Yale graduate and a
prosecutor, a soldier and a son, a father and a husband.
"I cried like a baby when they were born, both of them," Kerry says of his
two daughters, Vanessa and Alexandra.
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