The Crisis Papers - Bernard Weiner : An Advance Peek at Kerry's Acceptance

Speech (Fiction)

Read the entire thing at -
http://crisispapers.org/essays/kerry-speech.htm

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My fellow Democrats, and my fellow Americans. Thank you, thank you. I accept your nomination with great humility and determination -- to win, to fight hard, to start the process of repairing the current Administration's gross damage to our Constitution, to our economy, to our reputation abroad, to our sense of ourselves as a brave, honest, hopeful nation.

When others were dying all around me in Vietnam, and I survived, I chose to use the life granted me for public service, doing the best I could to make this country better, stronger in its morality and sense of just purpose, aiding others less fortunate. I remain of that mind, dedicated to preserving the best of America and improving those areas where we still have work to do.

As you probably already know, I came back from 'Nam as something of an angry young man. My president had lied to me and to my fellow warriors, and to the American people. Thousands, hundreds of thousands, were dying because of stubbornness, bad policy, corrupt intelligence, poor military planning and sloppy analysis.

I vowed to fight that administration and help close down that war; with the aid of other concerned veterans and the American citizenry, we finally forced our country to recognize the enormous, reckless mistake that had been made and the Nixon administration negotiated an end to that awful war. A negotiated settlement, by the way, not much different from the one we could have had years before -- and thus could have saved the lives of thousands of our young men -- but for the pigheaded stubbornness of our elected officials.

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