Kerry officially nominated as Democratic presidential candidate

Senator John Kerry was officially nominated on late Wednesday by the Democratic Party as its presidential candidate to face President George W. Bush in the November 2 elections.

US Democrats at the party's national convention have expressed concerted support for Senator John Kerry, who was officially nominated as its presidential candidate late Wednesday.

Democratic lawmakers, governors and Kerry's former rivals for the nomination all have voiced the desire to see a Democratic administration and make Republican George W. Bush a one-term president.

Representative Dennis Kucinich of Ohio was the latest to join the camp to endorse Kerry's campaign. A staunch opponent to the Iraq war, Kucinich abandoned his long-shot bid for the party's nomination only days before the opening of the convention.

In a speech at the convention Wednesday night, Kucinich accused the Bush administration of rushing to war with Iraq based on "distortions and misrepresentations," and should be "held accountable."

Iraq had nothing to do with the Sept. 11 attacks or with al-Qaida's role in the attacks, and no weapons of mass destruction were found in Iraq, said Kucinich. Instead, other forms of "weapons of mass destruction" existed in American cities -- poverty, joblessness, homelessness, racism and fear, he said.

He urged American voters to show courage to replace an "administration which has dishonored our constitution," to reject doctrines that separated the United States from the world, and to work with the International Criminal Court.

Bob Graham, a senator from Florida and also a former rival for the nomination, called on Florida voters to "make a difference for John Kerry and John Edwards," his two fellow senators.

Over 1,000 days since the Sept. 11 attacks, the United States still had not yet secured the beach-head in the war on terror, and none of the changes recommended by the commission investigating the attacks, few of which were new, were in place, he said.

"The ideas are there, it's the leadership that has been missing," Graham added.

Similar attacks on the Bush administration came from Al Sharpton, a reverend from New York. The United States had moved from international support and solidarity after the Sept. 11

attacks to hostility and hatred today, as a result of the administration's go-it-alone policy based on flawed intelligence, he said.

When the Bush administration found no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, which it had used to justify the war, the president sought to shift the purpose of the war, he said.

Over 4,000 delegates and some 15,000 Democratic officials and dignitaries gathered in Boston, capital of the northwestern US state of Massachusetts, this week to nominate the party's presidential and vice presidential candidates to challenge Bush in the November elections.