Huffington Sorry About Clooney Snafu

By Stephen M. Silverman

03/22/2006 at 08:40 AM EST

Political commentator Ariana Huffington has apologized to readers – but not directly to George Clooney – for a blog posted on her Web site earlier this month that was initially presented as coming directly from the Syriana Oscar winner.

"I now realize that I made a big mistake in posting a blog without clearly identifying that the material in it didn't originate as a blog post, but was pieced together from previous interviews," Huffington writes on her site, acknowledging that she was "blinded" to the issue of assembling a blog in which the source of the material wasn't clear. "I'm sorry I didn't see this earlier."

The profanity-laced posting, culled from Clooney's remarks to Larry King and to London's Guardian newspaper, criticized Democrats for holding back on their opinions of the Bush administration in the months before the start of the Iraq war.

"Miss Huffington's blog is purposefully misleading and I have asked her to clarify the facts," Clooney, 44, said in a statement last week. "I stand by my statements, but I did not write this blog."

Clooney's publicist Stan Rosenfield is not entirely satisfied with Huffington's latest posting about the matter. "She didn't apologize to George, did she?" he told the Associated Press on Tuesday. "An apology to the readers was appropriate. But to my knowledge, she has not apologized to George."