Charles Krauthammer has more reasons to doubt Dick “Dick” Clarke’s credibility. (Via Prestopundit.)

According to Krauthammer, in 2002, an interviewer

asked Clarke whether failing to blow up the camps and take out the Afghan sanctuary was a “pretty basic mistake.”

Clarke’s answer is unbelievable: “Well, I’m not prepared to call it a mistake. It was a judgment made by people who had to take into account a lot of other issues. . . . There was the Middle East peace process going on. There was the war in Yugoslavia going on. People above my rank had to judge what could be done in the counterterrorism world at a time when they were also pursuing other national goals.”

As Krauthammer points out, this is a direct contradiction of Clarke’s later claim that the Clinton administration had no higher priority than fighting terrorism. As Krauthammer notes,

if the Clarke of 2002 was telling the truth, then the Clarke of this week — the one who told the Sept. 11 commission under oath that “fighting terrorism, in general, and fighting al Qaeda, in particular, were an extraordinarily high priority in the Clinton administration — certainly [there was] no higher priority” — is a liar.

Yup. I put witnesses on the stand for a living. I sure wouldn’t want to put this guy on as a witness. His credibility is shot.

UPDATE: Rich Lowry has a good article as well. (Via Captain Ed.)