WASHINGTON — Hillary Rodham Clinton dismisses her critics and defends her handling of the deadly 2012 terrorist attack in Benghazi, Libya, in her new book, offering fellow Democrats a guide for how to talk about the fraught issue through the 2016 presidential race.

The former secretary of state’s “Hard Choices” is a rebuke to Republicans who have seized upon the Sept. 11, 2012, terrorist attack that killed U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans.

Should Clinton run for president in 2016, her four years as secretary of state and the Benghazi attack in particular are certain to be the subject of driving criticism from Republicans. She’s already trying to blunt the issue.

Republicans have accused the Obama administration of stonewalling congressional investigators and misleading the public about the nature of the attack in the weeks before the presidential election. Republicans used the attack to try to undermine President Barack Obama’s re-election and, now, to tarnish the still-uncertain Clinton bid to replace him in early 2017.