A Wall Street Journal editorial on Barack Obama’s most recent foreign policy speech suggests that Obama opposes the use of nuclear weapons “in any circumstances”:

[G]iven the Senator’s consistent opposition to the war in Iraq, it may seem peculiar that he should now propose invading a nuclear-armed Muslim country–all the more so since Mr. Obama let slip Thursday in an interview that as President he would rule out the use of nuclear weapons “in any circumstance.”

In fact, Obama said that he was opposed to using nuclear weapons against terrorists. The suggestion that he opposes the use of nuclear weapons in general is a myth resulting from some very sloppy journalism by the Associated Press, as Kevin Drum points out:

AP screwed up this story pretty badly. Here’s the first version of the AP dispatch that crossed the wire on Thursday (via Nexis, no link):

Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama said Thursday he would not use nuclear weapons “in any circumstance.”

“I think it would be a profound mistake for us to use nuclear weapons in any circumstance,” Obama said, with a pause, “involving civilians.” Then he quickly added, “Let me scratch that. There’s been no discussion of nuclear weapons. That’s not on the table.”

An hour later AP had changed the lede to add “to fight terrorism in Afghanistan and Pakistan” to the end of the first sentence, but the damage had already been done. If you saw the first version of the story and didn’t read the whole thing carefully, there’s a good chance you thought Obama was forswearing American use of nuclear weapons very broadly. Even the second version is only a little clearer, which makes Clinton’s criticism (“I don’t believe that any president should make any blanket statements with respect to the use or nonuse of nuclear weapons”) seem pretty reasonable. The AP story, especially the first version, implied something much wider than a simple declaration that Obama didn’t plan to lob nukes into caves in the Hindu Kush.

Via Drum, here is the actual transcript of the AP-Obama interview:

AP: Sir, with regard to terrorism in Afghanistan and Pakistan …

OBAMA: Yeah.

AP: Is there any circumstances where you’d be prepared or willing to use nuclear weapons to defeat terrorism and Osama bin Laden?

OBAMA: No, I’m not, uh, there has been no discussion of using nuclear weapons and that’s not a hypothetical that I’m going to discuss.

AP: Not even tactical?

OBAMA: No. I think it would be a profound mistake for us to use nuclear weapons in any circumstance. Uh, if involving you know, civilians… Let me scratch all that. There’s been no discussion of nuclear weapons. That’s not on the table so…

Unfortunately, the Journal’s statement is likely to be the first of many repetitions of this misperception.