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We would have called it treason. And we would have been right.

In WWII, broadcasts from Tokyo Rose in Japan and from Axis Sally in Germany warned our troops that their lives were being squandered in vain, that they were dying for big business and "the Jew" Roosevelt.

Today, we have a presidential candidate, the conscienceless Sen. John Kerry, doing the work of the enemy propagandists of yesteryear...

In an election year, our engagement in Iraq is a legitimate topic for sober debate. But Kerry isn't serious. All he does is to declare defeat. He certainly doesn't want to be al Qaeda's candidate, but he's made himself into their man through his irresponsibility.

If Kerry were insisting, without caveats, that we're going to stay the course and win, while backing up his criticisms with convincing details of how he would improve our efforts, that would be fine. But his mad claims of disaster and his inability to maintain a firm position unquestionably give aid and comfort to the enemy...

There was a wartime election in 1864, too. The Democratic Party's candidate, former Gen. George McClellan, ran on a platform that declared President Abraham Lincoln's policy a failure. The price of McClellan's rhetoric was a prolonged war and tens of thousands of dead Americans.

In 1864, the citizens of the North were steadfast. They rejected the Democratic Party's warnings of defeat and saved the Union. In 2004, the American people, North and South, East and West, need to reject the cynical lies of John F. Kerry and vote to support our troops and save Iraq.

Ralph Peters is a retired Army officer and the author of "Beyond Baghdad: Postmodern War and Peace."

Which is why it's especially significant that Rather admitted Tuesday night that CBS approached Burkett — whom the anchor admits was well-known for having tried repeatedly over the years to discredit George W. Bush — for the documents after a five-year search.

In other words, the documents didn't just fall into CBS' lap: The network went looking for them, and approached a source whose hatred for the president was well known.

And the broadcast was aired at a time when John Kerry was sinking in the polls, largely because of questions being raised about his own military record — which led much of the national media to start refocusing attention on Bush's National Guard service...

Now comes an admission that Rather's senior producer put Burkett directly in touch with the Kerry campaign — as a condition, says Burkett, of getting the documents.

Thirty years ago, Watergate changed the rules of American journalism. Now, it's time for another upheaval — and Rathergate could make that happen.

"I think Joe Lockhart's going to have to explain what he was doing, why he was doing it, why they had these multiple contacts between the campaign," Blunt said, especially since Burkett's allegations "clearly drove this story for days."

For Burkett, attacking Bush, posting Internet messages and giving media interviews have become such all-consuming passions...Interviewed over the weekend by CBS, Burkett acknowledged that he had "misled" the network by simply "throwing out a name" when asked to reveal the source of the documents...For 10 days, CBS declined to name Burkett as the person who provided the disputed Guard documents, saying only that they came from an "unimpeachable source."

In the rush to air the documents Burkett provided, CBS producers inadvertently left clues about their confidential source. People asked by CBS to authenticate the documents said the papers bore a header showing they had been faxed from a Kinko's in Abilene, Tex., 21 miles from Burkett's home. Documents examiner Emily Will said the footer indicated the document had been sent at 6:41 p.m. on Sept. 2.

The next day, at 7:32 p.m., Burkett posted a message hinting that CBS News was on the verge of airing a major scoop on the Bush National Guard controversy. "No proof, just gut instinct," he wrote.

After listening to Allawi, Sens. Richard Lugar and Joe Biden, who have struggled to be supportive of U.S. policy, were studies in decorous exasperation. "He (Allawi) has to put his game face on," said Biden. Lugar said the Iraqi elections scheduled for January "may not be perfect, but they're going to happen."

The question is: How imperfect can they be before they make matters worse? And how do you protect, say, upward of 3,000 polling places, which are sure to be targeted by insurgents?

"Fallujah," says Lugar, "is not in a position to have an election." So the conquest of that city, and perhaps of others in the Sunni triangle, must precede the elections. "Whether it happens before the (U.S.) election or after," says Lugar, "it will have to happen before the (Iraqi) elections occur in January."

Rhetorically, this was his best foreign policy speech by far (it helps to pick a side). Politically, it was risky. Kerry's new liberal tilt makes him more forceful on the stump, but opens huge vulnerabilities. Does he really want to imply that 1,000 troops died for nothing?

By picking the withdrawal camp, he has assigned himself a clear task. Right now 54 percent of likely voters believe that the U.S. should stay as long as it takes to rebuild Iraq, while 39 percent believe that we should leave as soon as possible. Between now and Nov. 2, Kerry must flip those numbers.

Substantively, of course, Kerry's speech is completely irresponsible. In the first place, there is a 99 percent chance that other nations will not contribute enough troops to significantly decrease the U.S. burden in Iraq. In that case, John Kerry has no Iraq policy. The promise to bring some troops home by summer will be exposed as a Disneyesque fantasy.

More to the point, Kerry is trying to use multilateralism as a gloss for retreat. If "the world" is going to be responsible for defeating Moktada al-Sadr and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, then no one will be responsible for defeating them. The consequences for the people of Iraq and the region will be horrific.

Finally, if the whole war is a mistake, shouldn't we stop fighting tomorrow? What do you say to the last man to die for a "profound diversion"?

Amendment 36 is bad for Colorado, which is no doubt why it's being bankrolled by out-of-state interests. The man behind Amendment 36 is J. Jorge Klor de Alva, a multimillionaire who currently lives in Brazil. Klor de Alva could just as easily have pushed this scheme in his former home state of California — a state that will only grow in influence if small states such as Colorado surrender their Electoral College edge. It's no coincidence that he didn't, however: Ending the winner-take-all system in California would help Bush more than Kerry, which defeats Klor de Alva's purpose.

The Electoral College was established for a very good reason: to protect the broad interests of all 50 states in the union, rather than merely those of highly populous states. Unfortunately, the Electoral College is also easily demagogued. Like so many bad ideas, reform sounds good to many on its face, but on closer look proves disastrous.

Here's why: Colorado is a state with a slight Republican majority, but which, nevertheless, has a longstanding tradition of electing Democrats to statewide and national office. If Colorado split its electoral votes, leaving just one or two electoral votes in play, future presidential candidates — and presidents — would ignore Colorado and its interests in favor of states with more electoral clout. They would skip over us and move on to more fertile ground.

Colorado would lose influence on such vital federal issues as military base closings, highways and water — the very issues that have the greatest impact on our economy and way of life. In other words, Amendment 36 would disenfranchise Colorado voters in presidential elections.

The slogan of the amendment's advocates, "Make your vote count," sure sounds appealing, but it would in fact reduce the power of Colorado and its citizens.

Now it's possible that the mystery man (or woman) is someone who lives in Denmark or Tibet and somehow got his hands on genuine documents that make the president look bad in the middle of a race that might turn out to be tighter than the rusted lug nuts on a '54 Chevy. But I doubt it. I'm betting he lives a lot closer to home, and, who knows, he might indeed turn out to be a "partisan political force" himself. And this is precisely Dan's problem. This is why, I suspect, he isn't coming clean, despite the damage to his reputation. Because Dan Rather may be protecting not just his source, but himself; because, if the source turns out to be a partisan, then Dan wasn't just taken for a ride, but may have been a willing passenger.

And then Dan, and CBS News, can kiss their reputations goodbye.

Mr. Goldberg, a correspondent with CBS News from 1972-2000, is the author of "Bias: A CBS Insider Exposes How the Media Distort the News," and, most recently, of "Arrogance: Saving America from the Media Elite" (Warner, 2003).

Already, a judge in New Mexico has rejected Republican efforts to require some voters to bring identification to the polls, while Democrats in Missouri are trying to quash a law they claim would keep some votes from being counted. Democratic Sen. John Kerry's campaign has asked the Federal Election Commission for guidance on funding a recount operation under the 2002 law overhauling campaign-finance rules. And both parties have lined up special teams of lawyers in at least five pivotal states to be ready to conduct recount fights.

Democrats...are recruiting more than 10,000 volunteer attorneys to file lawsuits to get rid of state rules that they fear will damp turnout or intimidate their voters. Volunteers also will monitor polls on Election Day.

The Bush-Cheney campaign also is building a pre-emptive legal team. Recruiters were dispatched from Washington early this summer to assess legal teams being organized by state-party officials in the swing states.

Some Republican party activists estimate that roughly 30,000 precincts in battleground states will be targeted by their party, which has an aggressive legal recruitment program that "is in its initial stages," says one insider.

Why? Because, until now, he has said everything conceivable regarding Iraq. Having taken every possible position on the war, there is nothing he can say now that is even remotely credible.

These dizzying contradictions -- so glaring, so public, so frequent -- have gone beyond undermining anything Kerry can now say on Iraq. They have been transmuted into a character issue. When Kerry went off windsurfing during the Republican convention, Jay Leno noted that even Kerry's hobbies depend on wind direction. Kerry on the war has become an object not only of derision but of irreconcilable suspicion. What kind of man, aspiring to the presidency, does not know his own mind about the most serious issue of our time?