Howard Dean Lies About His Brother's Military Service

Howard Dean Lies About His Brother's Military Service

It seems that even the New York Times is getting a little uneasy about Howard Dean's aversion to the truth. His propensity for creative reality was exposed again when he lied about his brother's military service.

"Asked by The Quad-City Times, which is based in Davenport, Iowa, to complete the sentence "My closest living relative in the armed services is," Dr. Dean wrote in August, "My brother is a POW/MIA in Laos, but is almost certainly dead.""

Just as troubling as his lying is his tenacity for adhering to a lie when caught red handed. "The way I read the question was that they wanted to know if I knew anything about the armed services from a personal level," he said. "I don't think it was inaccurate or misleading if anybody knew what the history was, and I assumed that most people knew what the history was. Anybody who wanted to write about this could have looked through the 23-year history to see that I've always acknowledged my brother's a civilian, was a civilian."

This might fly if Howard Dean can prove that he is an adherent of Stanley Fish's deconstructionist theory of communication, in which the reader if free to make any interpretation he wishes. But, that would probably cause him even more problems.

Otherwise, Dean was clearly fibbing.