WASHINGTON (AFP) — At noon on January 20, George W. Bush hands successor Barack Obama two unfinished wars and a worldwide economic meltdown and leaves historians the job of judging his tumultuous eight-year presidency.
The 43rd US president also bequeaths the controversial tactics of the global "war on terror" that he credits for protecting the United States after the September 11, 2001 attack -- the worst strike ever on US soil.
The vastly unpopular Bush, 62, will also leave behind the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, a Middle East still in flames, uneasy relations with Russia, and, his supporters say, vastly improved ties with Brazil, China, and India.
Aides point to his overhaul of US aid overseas, including an unprecedented increase in assistance to help Africa battle deadly diseases like malaria and HIV/AIDS, and cite efforts to spread democracy worldwide among his successes.
His high points included a defiant vow in the still-smoldering ruins of the World Trade Center to punish Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda terrorists at a time when he enjoyed staggeringly high popularity with the US public.
His low points included the failure of the government response to killer Hurricane Katrina, which drowned New Orleans and helped send his job approval to lows not seen in at least a generation.
On the economic front, Bush boasts of more than 50 months of uninterrupted growth and has rejected any responsibility for a US housing crisis that has contaminated the financial sector worldwide over the past year.
In 2008, the US economy shed more jobs than at any time since 1945.
Still, Bush said with one week before Obama takes over, "I'm better than fine. I am proud of the accomplishments of this administration.
"I know I gave it my all for eight years. And I did not sell my soul for the sake of popularity. And so when I get back home and look in the mirror I will be proud of what I see," he said.
Where critics see a bloody invasion of choice in Iraq and a failed war in Afghanistan, Bush unabashedly cites the "liberation" of the 50 million people in both countries, and links them to what he has touted as his greatest success, the absence of a new terrorist attack since 2001.
Bush, famously averse to publicly admitting mistakes, says the Iraq war was justified despite the failure to find the weapons of mass destruction at the core of the public case for the March 2003 invasion.
"The decision to remove Saddam Hussein was the right decision early in my presidency, it is the right decision at this point in my presidency, and it will forever be the right decision," he said in March 2008.
With the Iraq war in its sixth year, at a cost of more than 4,000 US lives and hundreds of billions of dollars, Bush acknowledged this week that his May 2003 speech under a "Mission Accomplished" banner "was a mistake" that "sent the wrong message."
But the Abu Ghraib prison scandal and the failure to find weapons of mass destruction, were "disappointments" -- not mistakes -- he said, adding: "Things didn't go according to plan, let's put it that way."
"I have often said that history will look back and determine that which could have been done better or, you know, mistakes I made," he said.
Bush has also brushed aside charges that his administration is among the most secretive and ideologically driven ever, and criticisms that he betrayed US values by creating a secret prison system for suspected terrorists later moved to Guantanamo Bay.
Some of his foes have blasted the president for authorizing interrogation practices -- like the controlled drowning of "waterboarding" -- long regarded as torture, and for warrantless spying on Americans.
Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney have said such tactics were critical to preventing terrorist attacks, and dismiss anger at the failure to capture or kill bin Laden.
But the wars and the controversies, as well as corruption scandals and the increasingly sour economic climate, led Bush's Republicans to defeat in the 2006 legislative elections, two years after he won a second term and achieved the rare accomplishment of holding a congressional majority.
Shortly after the defeat, and after months of rejecting calls to oust Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Bush finally replaced him with Robert Gates, whom Obama will keep in the job.
Bush's second term also saw him part with the neoconservative foreign policy that drove the Iraq war -- which alienated some key traditional US allies and most of the Muslim world -- in favor of pragmatic policies towards countries like Iran and North Korea, which he had once branded part of an "axis of evil."
For some, like Senate Democratic majority leader Harry Reid, Bush will be remembered as "the worst president this country ever had."
But Bush's supporters admire his refusal to compromise, as the outgoing president himself shrugs at history's judgment.
"Listen, they're still writing books analyzing George Washington," he said in November 2007. "And so therefore my attitude is if they're analyzing the first president, the 43rd president doesn't need to worry about it."
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