Edwards v. O'Reilly on homeless vets

John Edwards and Fox commentator Bill O'Reilly are mixing it up again.

O’Reilly, host of "The O'Reilly Factor," questioned Edwards' assertion that 200,000 veterans "will go to sleep under and bridges and on grates" because they are homeless tonight, Rob Christensen reports.

"They may be out there, but there's not many of them out there. Okay," O'Reilly said. "If you know where's a veteran, sleeping under a bridge, you call me immediately, and we will make sure that man does not do it."

Edwards responded with a statement: "For someone who spends a lot of time shouting about patriotism, you would think he would be outraged by the treatment of our homeless veterans. How many more will it take before we wake up and solve this crisis?"

The Edwards campaign cited a November study by the National Alliance to End Homelessness. A spokeswoman for the alliance said they got their information from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs for the year 2006.

The VA report said "about one-third of the adult homeless population have served their country in the Armed Services. Current population estimates suggest that about 195,000 veterans are homeless on any given night and perhaps twice as many experience homelessness at some point during the course of a year."

The report said about 45 percent of the homeless vets suffer from mental illness and slightly more than 70 percent suffer from alcohol or other drug abuse problems.

Correction: An earlier version of this post misstated the year.