On the February 21 edition of CNN's The Situation Room, host Wolf Blitzer misquoted a reported statement by the campaign of former Sen. John Edwards (D-NC), saying that the Edwards campaign's statement disputing a Variety.com article was that “Edwards actually spoke out about the threat that Israel would bomb Iran's nuclear facilities and he cited it as a short-term threat to world peace.” In fact, what Blitzer called Edwards' “statement” was actually a slight variation on the claim Edwards was disputing. In the February 19 Variety.com article, columnist Peter Bart wrote: “Perhaps the greatest short-term threat to world peace, Edwards remarked, was the possibility that Israel would bomb Iran's nuclear facilities.” The Associated Press and an ABC News blog post on February 20 reported that spokesman Jonathan Prince called the Variety.com story “erroneous,” saying that Iran -- not Israel -- was the “greatest short-term threat to world peace.”

From Prince's statement:

Senator Edwards did not say nor does he believe that the greatest short-term threat to world peace is the possibility that Israel would bomb Iran's nuclear facilities. Senator Edwards said, as he has in the past, that Iran acquiring a nuclear weapon is one of the greatest short-term threats to world peace.

The AP report noted that a February 20 blog post by Jim Geraghty on National Review Online had picked up the Variety.com story. Geraghty has since noted that the Edwards campaign disputed the Variety.com story. However, as of 2 p.m. ET on February 22, some conservative blogs that linked to Geraghty's post or the Variety.com article, asserting that Edwards said Israel was the greatest threat to peace, have not noted the Edwards campaign's statement, including Power Line and Human Events Online's Rightometer.

From the 4 p.m. hour of the February 21 edition of CNN's The Situation Room:

BLITZER: John Edwards' presidential campaign is trying to set the record straight about his stance on Israel. Variety.com recently quoted the Democrat as telling Hollywood donors that Israel's attacking Iran would be the greatest threat to world peace. A spokesman for Edwards -- the Edwards campaign -- issued a statement saying Edwards actually spoke out about the threat that Israel would bomb Iran's nuclear facilities, and he cited it as a short-term threat to world peace.