John Kerry: We will give America back its truth

From a speech by the Senator from Massachusetts, after winning the New Hampshire primary

I love New Hampshire. I love Iowa too. And I hope to have the opportunity to love a lot of other states in the weeks and months ahead. Thank you, New Hampshire, for lifting up this campaign and the cause of an America that belongs not to the privileged, not to the few, but to all of our people.

And I make you this pledge tonight: I have spent my whole life fighting against powerful interests - and I've only just begun to fight. I have a message for the influence peddlers, for the polluters, the health maintenance organisations, the drug companies, big oil and all the special interests who now call the White House home: We're coming. You're going. And don't let the door hit you on the way out.

This victory also belongs in a special way to the veterans who marched with us and lifted us up from the lowest points to where we stand tonight. In the hardest moments of the past month, I depended on the same band of brothers I depended on more than 30 years ago. We're a little older, a little grayer, but we still know how to fight for our country.

Stand with us - and we will give America the security of energy independence, because our sons and daughters should never have to fight and die for Mideast oil. Stand with us - and we will give America back its truth as a country where freedom rings, a country of equal rights and civil liberties where the Attorney General is no longer named John Ashcroft.

As I stand here now, I think of Robert Frost's words: the woods of New Hampshire are "lovely, dark and deep."

And they certainly are lovely tonight.