WASHINGTON - Former US vice-president Dick Cheney's autobiography presents a robust defense of his push for the US invasion of Iraq without critically examining two issues central to the near-failure of the United States in the war: The Bush administration's decision to disband the country's army and banish all members of Saddam Hussein's Baath Party.

In My Time is juicy reading for its harsh criticism of two secretaries of state, Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice, and one defense secretary, Robert Gates. Not surprising was Cheney's adulation of Gates' Pentagon predecessor, Donald Rumsfeld, the vice-president's political mentor.

Cheney's parting shot after decades of public service comes in the run-up to the 10th anniversary of the Sept 11, 2001, attacks. The book has rekindled debate over the rationale to attack Iraq in 2003 and the cost in US lives and dollars. It also has focused attention on whether the war diverted US attention from catching al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden and eradicating the group's hideouts in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Cheney and former president George W. Bush had said invading Iraq and removing Saddam was imperative after Sept 11. They insisted Saddam was working with bin Laden and that Iraq had amassed weapons of mass destruction to use against its neighbors or to give to al-Qaida for use against the US.

But the bipartisan Sept 11 commission, which Congress created, found "no credible evidence that Iraq and al-Qaida cooperated on attacks against the United States".

Despite that and other solid evidence to the contrary, Cheney insists that Iraq was a nexus of terrorism and Saddam was working hand-in-glove with bin Laden.

Confronted by the failure to find weapons of mass destruction, Cheney does accept that Saddam did not have such armaments, an error that Cheney blames on faulty US intelligence.

Some critics say he carefully selected intelligence material that made the case for Saddam having those weapons while ignoring evidence on the other side.

Cheney says nothing about disbanding the military. He doesn't detail the wholesale banishment of Baath Party members - not just government figures - from positions of leadership and authority.

Membership in the party was key to career advancement in Iraq. It did not necessarily prove political beliefs.

Without a viable military, the job of policing an alien culture fell to US forces, trained to fight wars but not enforce civil order.

Without an interim government that had support from both Shiites and Sunni Muslims, the country was under the one-man rule of American L. Paul Bremer. He ran the occupation until June 2004 and then was involved in a long and destabilizing struggle to elect a government and write a constitution.

In addition, Cheney virtually ignores the conduct of the war effort to the point where the Bush administration began to realize that the US was on the verge of failure in 2006, three years after the invasion.

Associated Press