Did Dean offer Clark the VP spot? And what's it all about?

As the race for the Dem nomination rapidly becomes a Dean-Clark one-on-one, the campaigns and candidates are seen to, uh, clash. Latest dispute is about whether Howard Dean offered Wes Clark a spot on his ticket as VP. And it's getting ugly...

First, Clark says tells ABC News that the vice president's slot "was sort of discussed ... and dangled before I made the decision to run" in a meeting he had with Dean in September.

Then, Joe Trippi, Dean's campaign manager, following Clark on the same ABC News program, denies that the issue was discussed.

Then Matt Bennett, Clark Campaign Communications Director, issued a brief, snippy statement:

"Joe Trippi may want to check in with his candidate before talking. Howard Dean did in fact offer Wes Clark a place on the ticket in a one-on-one meeting that Trippi did not attend. Joe Trippi shouldn't comment on meetings he wasn't invited to."

Finally, Reuters called up Dean himself and asked if he had offered the spot to Clark.

"No, I did not," Dean told Reuters in a telephone interview. "I think Wes is a good guy. I think he'd be a good running mate, but I think it would be highly foolish of me to offer anybody the running mate spot."

Is someone lying? Probably not. I'm guessing Dean did in fact offer the VP spot to Clark, but obliquely enough that he could plausibly deny having done so. Dean can feel comfortable saying he did not offer the spot to Clark, since he probably never said something like "Hey, support me, and you can be my veep." And Clark is not lying when he says the idea was "dangled". He's simply answering honestly about the implicit content of a meeting that was no doubt full of ambiguity.

It is disingenuous of Dean to claim that he hasn't thought about his VP spot at all. Given that he and Clark did meet in September, what the hell else could they have been discussing?