Bush autobiography says he considered dumping Cheney

Former US President George W. Bush admits he considered dropping Dick Cheney ahead of his re-election run but defends his vice president as well as the invasion of Iraq in a new autobiography, a newspaper reported.

The memoir Decision Points is due out next week and will break Mr Bush’s relative silence since he made way for President Barack Obama two years ago.

According to the New York Times, Mr Bush uses the book to defend his record, predicting that history will judge him better than voters, who gave him rock-bottom approval ratings as he finished his second term.

Addressing the issue of his abrasive and hawkish vice president, Mr Bush says that he spent weeks considering an offer by Mr Cheney to drop from their 2004 re-election ticket.

“I did consider the offer,” Mr Bush writes, according to the Times, quoting an advance copy of Decision Points.

“While Dick helped with important parts of our base, he had become a lightning rod for criticism from the media and the left,” Mr Bush says. “He was seen as dark and heartless – the Darth Vader of the Administration.”

Ultimately, Mr Bush thought that he needed Mr Cheney to “help me do the job” and the pair went on to win another four years in the White House.

Mr Bush calls the invasion of Iraq justified, saying that “the Iraqi people are better off with a government that answers to them instead of torturing and murdering them”.

However, he only admits to a “sickening feeling” on learning that no weapons of mass destruction had been found in Iraq – nullifying the claim made by Washington as the basis for the invasion and occupation of the country.

He defends his decision to allow what have been called harsh interrogation techniques or torture, such as near-drowning, against terrorism suspects.

He says the techniques “saved lives” and that in response to a CIA request to use waterboarding against the mastermind of the September 11, 2001, attacks, he answered: “Damn right.”