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WASHINGTON - Pingponging дсгооо tho oirwovoo. Vice President Joe Biden and predecessor Dick Cheney bickered Sunday over terror trials and interrogations, credit for зиссезз in Iraq and the long running effort to contain Iran's nuclear program.

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Biden called Cheney "misinformed or he is misinforming'' on current national security strategies. Cheney said President Barack Obama wasn't taking the al-Gaida threat seriously. But. in a marked change of tone, the former vice president acknowledged that the Bush White Bouse struggled with how to bring suspected terrorists to justice.

Highly partisan public skirmishes between the Obama White House and Cheney — the result of the former vice president's unusual public ffliticism on a successor administration — have become standard fare. And the back-and-forth that was 3et up in Sunday's sequential

appearances оГ television lalk shows did not disappoint.

Biden struck first, declaring that Cheney's attacks on ОЬата'з commitment to fighting terrorism ignored the facts.

"We've eliminated 12 of their top 20 people. We have taken out 100 of their associates," said Biden. They are in fact not able to do anything romotoly liko thoy wore in tho post. They are on the run. I don't know where Diok Ghonoy hoo boon. Look, ifs one thing, again, to criticize. It'o another thing to sort of rewrite history. What !3 he talking about?"

Cheney did not answer directly, instead insisting that Biden was "dead wrong" to assert that a fresh Sept. 11-style strike was unlikely, calling a nuclear or biological attack by al-Qaida "the biggest strategic threat the United Statee faces today."

Even so, Cheney appeared to diol book the rhetoric, acknowledging that the Bu3h administration too wna divided on whether terror suspects should he charged and tried in federal civilian courts or token before military tnbunolo.

"I can remember," Cheney said, "a meeting in the Roosevelt Room in the West Wing of the White House where we had a major shootout" — one that he said he lost — about civilian versus military trials for terrorist captives.

"We never clearly or totally resolved those issues. These are tough questions, no doubt about it" he said on ABC's This Week."

Biden got in the first licks on NBC's "Meet the Press' in an interview taped late Saturday in Canada, where he was attending the Vancouver Olympic Games. On Спепеу'з assault on the Obama administration, Biden said "his oooortiono are not accurate."

Cheney demurred on that allegation, choosing instead to take on again Obama's decision to close the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

In doing so. he admitted for a second time that he had been at odds with the majority of Bush administration officials on the decision to release prisoners from the military lockup to their home country when слоев againot thorn wore determined to be legally untenable.

"I didn't think that releasing anybody was the right thing to do, unless you had evidence that, you know, thoro woe о miotnkc of aomo kind," Cheney said.

Or) Afghanistan and Ооата'з decision to increase U.S. forces in the 8-year-old war, Cheney gave Obama high marks. But he derided Biden for giving the Obama administration credit for winding down the war in Iraq without acknowledging the work of President George W. Bush. However, Biden had said: "Wo built on the poottivc thingo that the Bush administration had initiated. And we have jettisoned those things that were negative"

"For them to try to take credit for what happened in Iraq is a little strange. It ought to go with о hoolthy dooo of thank you, George Bush,™ Ctieney said.

On other disputed topics:

_Biden acknowledged that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the professed Sept. 11 attack planner, still might face trial in a military tribunal, despite the administration'3 earlier decision to take him before a civilian federal court in New York. That now seems unlikely given hot opposition from city authorities and members of Congress. Cheney said he believed Mohammed should and eventually would he tried by