Analysis: Bush Legacy a Work in Progress [View All]

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Guardian

Tuesday January 18, 2005 3:01 PM

By TOM RAUM

Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) - President Bush is raising the bar on expectations, with a second-term agenda to transform the United States and the world. But early reviews on his evolving legacy are as mixed as the nation is divided politically.

Bush's self-styled legacy is to win the war on terrorism, be remembered as the leader who brought democracy to Afghanistan and Iraq and helped spread it through the Middle East. Domestically, he wants to reshape Social Security with private investment accounts, simplify the tax system and create what he calls ``an ownership society.''

Detractors see a quite different Bush legacy.

They assert he squandered international good will after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, waged an ill-advised war in Iraq based on faulty intelligence, alarmed the world community with a doctrine of pre-emptive warfare and flouted international agreements on prisoner treatment.

``Our misguided resort to war has created much more and much more intense anti-American feeling than Osama bin Laden ever dreamed of,'' said Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-4740262,00.html