So Dan Rather has recanted - sort of.

Initially, Rather was defiantly adamant and standing on the veracity of the bogus memos about President Bush's service in the Texas Air National Guard. He was deploring "those people" and insisting he would not give in to "a counterattack (from) partisan political operatives."

Now, saying it wasn't all his fault, he has backhandedly apologized for going on the air with documents whose genuineness he cannot certify and about whose sourcing he was "misled": "We made a mistake in judgment and for that I am sorry."

What's really sorry is Rather's indecency in declining to quit. To salvage what credibility is left to it, CBS ought to do what The New York Times did to its equally ideologized editor Howell Raines in a similar instance - and give him the ax.

Since John Kerry's nomination in Boston, there have been really only two substantive stories about the presidential election - the issues raised about Kerry in connection with the Swift Boat veterans and, later, the bogus Rather memos. Both are related in that they go to the question of double standards, notably in the mainline press.

Let us count the ways.

Kerry, medaled several times over, made his service in Vietnam the centerpiece of his campaign. By contrast, Bush's Guard service has been held up as somehow deficient, the consequence of rich-boy favoritism that kept him out of the Vietnam action. Though Bush was honorably discharged, his Guard service has been a factor in all his political campaigns, yet never more than in this one. Democratic National Chairman Terry McAuliffe - appointed to the post by Bill Clinton - insists Bush has lied about his Guard years and served dishonorably.

With Kerry heading toward the Democratic nomination, the group Swift Boat Veterans for Truth was launched. Many Swiftees who served at the time Kerry served have taken issue with not only his military record but also his highly visible peacenik activities beginning in the early 1970s. Swift Boat commander John O'Neill has written a best-selling book ("Unfit for Command") about Kerry's war and postwar activities. Recently, American POWs have told how Kerry, Jane Fonda and others extended both the war and the POWs' time in the camps.