Colleagues: with thanks to my colleagues who are here today - who are also such steadfast friends of Poland, supporting the Solidarity movement from its earliest days, voting so overwhelmingly for NATO enlargement. Family: with gratitude to my late parents - who instilled in me a reverence for my Polish heritage. Polish American Community: also grateful for the Polish American community, which has extraordinary organizations - empowering organizations rooted in heritage, history and philanthropy. Glad we’re joined today by leaders of: Polish American Congress, the Polish Women’s Alliance, and the Polish Heritage Association. From my family and from them, I have learned the values that our community holds so dear - patriotism, justice, hard work, loyalty, community, help for those who practice self help, and respect for others. As a child I learned about our proud history - a history marked by strong, achieving women- from Queen Jadwiga, who ushered in Poland’s “golden age” which was also the age of Copernicus and the founding of Jagiellonian University, to Maria Sklodowski Curie, the first woman to win a Nobel Prize - and she won two of them.

The history of Poland has, at times, been a melancholy one – every king, kaiser, czar or comrade who ever wanted to have a war in Europe always started by invading Poland. But we know that while Poland was occupied, the heart and soul of the Polish Nation has never been occupied. Poland has always strived to be part of the West in terms of its values and its orientation. So, in 1980, when an obscure electrician working in the Gdansk Shipyard jumped over a wall proclaiming the Solidarity movement, he took the Polish people and the whole world with him to bring down the Iron Curtain. Now, after so many years of foreign domination, Poland has made the difficult transition to democracy and a free market, and Poland has taken its rightful place as a member of the family of democratic nations. Poland is now a full, contributing member of NATO. We are partners again – just as we were during our Revolutionary War when Polish Patriots fought along side our great American patriots, just as we were during the Second World War when Polish mathematicians helped us break the codes of enigma at Bletchley Park and when the Polish Army in exile fought by our side, just as we were in Poland’s earliest days as a member of NATO when we fought side by side to stop brutality and ethnic cleansing in Kosovo. Today, Poland is our partner in the war against terrorism. I always knew the United States of America could count on Poland, we are partners once again, today, tomorrow, and into the future.

I thank the government and people of Poland for this great honor. I will continue to work to strengthen the bond between our nations, for our freedom and yours, so that Polish-American friendship will be a force for peace and stability in this the twenty first century.