Not a draft, but hot air: the Democrats have a scare tactic. Another one.

IN the Democrats' long history of dishonest vote-grubbing, their recent perpetuation of rumors that President Bush will bring back the military draft is not the most shameless--but it might make the top ten.

The last American to be drafted into the military reported to boot camp in 1973, the year the U.S. pulled out of Vietnam and President Nixon abolished the draft. Since then, no elected official or Pentagon policymaker has seriously suggested its restoration. Legislation to restore the draft has been introduced in Congress, by Rep. Charles Rangel of New York and Sen. Ernest Hollings of South Carolina, both liberal Democrats. These lawmakers have been refreshingly honest in admitting that their action aims to undermine public support for the war in Iraq, and to build support for the withdrawal of U.S. troops. And yet: The Democratic party's leaders have been screaming from the rooftops to gullible teenagers and their parents that President Bush is going to abduct America's children for use as cannon fodder.

It will come as no surprise to those familiar with John Kerry that he is of two minds on the subject. In a December 2003 speech, he said: "If we had a need for a general mobilization in the future, then I think that's the only fair way to do it, but I don't think we have that need for a general mobilization at this point." By September 22, Kerry had changed his position, asserting that he would never bring back the draft, but that it was a possibility under Bush: "If George Bush were to be reelected, given the way he has gone about this war, and given his avoidance of responsibility in North Korea and Iran and other places, it is possible--I can't tell you. I will tell you this: I will not reinstate the draft."

Where did this draft rumor come from? Well, the idea has been used for scare-mongering in anti-war circles ever since Afghanistan. In September 2002, the Selective Service System put out a press release stating that "no heightened measures have been undertaken to bring the nation closer to the re-establishment of conscription." The rumor picked up steam nonetheless. Soon the Democrats found themselves with a presidential nominee who polled so poorly among young people that he made Al Gore look like Lil'Kim--and the stage was set for a major smear campaign.

In the first two weeks of September, comments speculating that President Bush would restore the draft issued from Teresa Heinz Kerry, John Edwards, Ted Kennedy, Tom Harkin, Max Cleland, Howard Dean, and Kerry's stepson Andre Heinz. This led to reports in college newspapers such as the one at Ohio's Kent State University, which reported on Sept. 8 that "George W. Bush is planning to reinstate the military draft by June 15, 2005."

The Democrats' partners in the media have covered this story without the slightest bit of logic or skepticism. The centerpiece of a Sept. 29 CBS Evening News story on the threatened draft was a woman named Beverly Cocco of Walton Park, Penn., who was shown in the report working as a crossing guard. Correspondent Richard Schlesinger said Cocco "usually worries about other people's kids," but is now more worried about her own sons--one of whom told CBS, "It's the [draft] talk. The talk's there. And though people aren't actually coming out and saying it, it's there." Schlesinger concluded by describing Cocco as "a Bush supporter today, but ... Beverly could easily cross over."

What CBS did not mention is that Cocco is the head of the Philadelphia branch of an activist group called "Parents Against the Draft" that is sending out e-mails warning of a draft. When asked by blogger Bill Ardolino why anti-draft activist Cocco was selected as the story's focus, Schlesinger said, "Long story short, she's a Republican. When we put the story together, I went looking for a Republican. We worked backwards from the e-mail, that's how we found her. She told me that she was going to vote for Bush, though she said she may flip-flop." CBS producer Linda Karas told Ardolino: "The truth of the e-mails [warning about a draft was] absolutely irrelevant to the piece, because all the story said was that people were worried. It's a story about human beings that are afraid of the draft. We did not say that this [e-mail] was true, it's just circulating. We are not verifying the e-mail." Apparently Karas got the new slogan from her boss Dan Rather: The truth is irrelevant.

Another blogger, William J. Dyer, noticed a June 17 letter to the editor from Cocco to the Trevose, Penn., Northeast Times. "Since this is a federal bill, I was advised to contact Sen. [Arlen] Specter, Sen. [Rick] Santorum, and Congressman Joe Hoeffel," Cocco wrote. "Sen. Specter's office said that these bills are a 'secret.'"

Of course, that was balderdash: There's no such thing as a "secret bill," and no phone-answering staffer in the U.S. Senate would tell a constituent that there is such a thing.

Hoeffel, the Democratic nominee in this year's U.S. Senate race, wrote a reply to the paper, stating that Cocco's letter contained one major inaccuracy--no, not that there's no such thing as a "secret bill," or that the draft rumors were bunk; instead, Hoeffel felt the need to emphasize that he opposes restoring the draft, and is not undecided, as Cocco's letter had said.

By July 6, he was denouncing conscription on the floor of the House: "I think it is inevitable that we will have a mandatory military draft.... Now, I think that is a fact of life. The president may not want to admit it. The secretary of defense may not want to own up to it. But I think the facts are that we cannot continue to meet our military obligations without a military draft under the policies that are being pursued by this administration."

You'd think there really were plans to have a draft. But the truth about the administration's position is clear and unambiguous. On Sept. 23, Secretary Rumsfeld told the Senate: "It is absolutely false that anyone in this administration is considering reinstating the draft. That is nonsense. We've got 295 million people in the United States of America. We need 1.4 million people to serve in the active force. We are having no trouble attracting and retaining the people we need." Secretary of State Colin Powell told ABC that "President Bush has no plans for a draft, nor is a draft needed." During a campaign appearance, Vice President Cheney agreed: "From the perspective of the Pentagon, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the secretary of defense, former secretary of defense, the president and everybody else, this notion that somehow there's a secret plan out there to reinstitute the draft is hogwash. It's just not true. It's an urban legend or a nasty political rumor, but it's not true." Even President Bush, in the first debate, said flatly, "The military will be an all-volunteer army." And the Republican House leadership is now bringing up the liberals' draft bill, so that it can be openly defeated on the House floor and the issue laid to rest.

None of this matters. The Democratic party has now, as a matter of strategy, adopted the logic of the conspiracy theorist. Just as the grassy-knoll types insist that the lack of evidence that a vast conspiracy assassinated John F. Kennedy is proof of the conspiracy's power and its effectiveness at covering its tracks, Democrats insist that the lack of any evidence of a secret Bush plan to restore the draft is evidence of how secret the plan is. A Kerry victory depends, in part, on the extent to which this fantasy can take hold among American voters.

Mr. Geraghty writes the Kerry Spot on National Review Online.