Defence secretary at time of Iraq invasion says human, financial and political toll has been worth it to remove Saddam Hussein

The former US defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld believes the war in Iraq has been worth the cost and remains largely unapologetic about his handling of the conflict, according to his new autobiography.

Had the government of Saddam Hussein remained in power the Middle East would be "far more perilous than it is today", Rumsfeld wrote in his 800-page memoir, scheduled for release on Tuesday but reported in today's Washington Post.

Rumsfeld and other US officials cited the threat posed by Iraqi weapons of mass destruction as justification for the 2003 US-led invasion. No such weapons were found.

The former defence chief was a leading architect of the Iraq war. He was fired by President George Bush in 2006, with US troops bogged down after three and half years of fighting.

Rumsfeld's book, Known and Unknown, a copy of which was obtained by The Washington Post, covers his entire life, but more than half of it deals with his six years as Bush's defence secretary.

Speaking out for the first time since leaving office, Rumsfeld offers a vigorous explanation of his thoughts and actions about the war and is making available on his website many previously classified or private documents, the Post reported.

Much of Rumsfeld's explanation of what went wrong in the crucial first year of the occupation of Iraq stems from a pre-war failure to manage the postwar political transition, when the state department and Pentagon held vastly different views, the newspaper said.

Rumsfeld depicts Bush as presiding over a national security process that was marked by incoherent decision-making and policy drift, and a detriment to the war effort, the Post said.

Rumsfeld suggests Bush was at fault for not doing more to resolve disagreements among senior advisers. The president "did not always receive, and may not have insisted on, a timely consideration of his options before he made a decision, nor did he always receive effective implementation of the decisions he made", Rumsfeld wrote.

Addressing charges that he failed to provide enough troops for the Iraq war, he wrote: "In retrospect, there may have been times when more troops could have helped." But Rumsfeld insists that if senior military officers had reservations about the size of the invading force, they never informed him, the Post said.

In a lengthy section on the administration's treatment of wartime detainees, Rumsfeld regrets not leaving office in May 2004, after the Abu Ghraib prison scandal erupted, the newspaper said. "Looking back, I see there are things the administration could have done differently and better with respect to wartime detention," he acknowledged.

Addressing charges that he failed to provide enough troops for the Iraq war, he wrote: "In retrospect, there may have been times when more troops could have helped." But Rumsfeld insists that if senior military officers had reservations about the size of the invading force, they never informed him, the Post said.

Mr. Wolfowitz, the deputy defense secretary, opened a two-front war of words on Capitol Hill, calling the recent estimate by Gen. Eric K. Shinseki of the Army that several hundred thousand troops would be needed in postwar Iraq, "wildly off the mark." Pentagon officials have put the figure closer to 100,000 troops.