WITH THE White House changeover a matter of weeks away, many words will be written to describe the Bush legacy. So many words, when just a few, of a rude Anglo-Saxon variety, might suffice.

Outgoing vice-president Dick Cheney summed up the administration's past eight years succinctly in an interview on American television: "I think we've done pretty well." Ain't that the truth?

The major success was that Cheney, and the rest of the good ole boys in the US war machine, achieved their long-term ambition of invading Iraq.

Mission accomplished, as the banner said when President Bush made his victory speech on the deck of that aircraft carrier way back on May 1, 2003.

There was no victory. The war goes on and profits continue to roll into the coffers of the military sub-contractors.

The difference, in the fifth year of the occupation of Iraq, is that some of the local warmongers are now getting a piece of the action.

Having failed to fight the various factions into submission, the US is buying them off. In a TV news report last week, an Iraqi army officer could be seen doling out $100 bills like confetti. It might have been cheaper to drop dollars rather than bombs on Baghdad.

You have to imagine that many of the dollars channelled to the Sunni militias are being wisely invested in armaments in preparation for the civil war they will wage against their Shia countrymen just as soon as the American forces decamp.

These years in Iraq have not been wasted. Bush says that the US military is "stronger, more agile, and better prepared" than it was when he took over in 2001.

Despite this strength, agility, and preparedness, Bush is losing his second war in Afghanistan. This conflict started as a quest to crush al-Qaeda, confront the oppressive Taliban regime and make Afghanistan safe for women (and men who would rather not wear a beard).

Now the country is not safe for anyone. If the Taliban don't get you, a random air strike from the US air force will. (Bombing wedding parties a speciality.) Legacy-wise, Bush speaks proudly of his record in preventing any terrorist attack on the US since September 11 2001. Other countries, including Britain, have not been so fortunate.

We had our own taste of terror at Glasgow airport. Bilal Abdulla, the Iraqi born in Aylesbury, who was brought up from the age of four in his own country but returned to work as a doctor in our health service, was a most unlikely candidate to lead that attack.

Abdulla was motivated by anger at the American and British invasion of his country and specifically the US troops bulldozing his family home in Iraq. This recruiting-sergeant syndrome is very much part of the Bush factor. (For the Tony Blair bequest, please see under Bush, George W, fellow traveller.) The Bush legacy is Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib and all the prisons and police stations in the world where sundry foreign secret services tortured for America on a freelance basis. It is the Patriot Act, rendition, and the erosion of civil liberties.

Strangely, I cannot reconcile Bush the legacy with Bush the man. How can such a gormless individual have unleashed so much evil? Surely it is the dark and dangerous Dick Cheney who has been pulling the strings while Bush has been the stooge?

Bush is the man with no great stomach for going to war, at least as a combatant. Cheney is the man with the connection to Halliburton, the military one-stop shop. Cheney is the man who blithely and publicly invited a US senator who attempted to raise the issue of this connection to feck off. Cheney is the man who last week said he approved of the water-boarding of an al-Qaeda prisoner, and who described the torture process as "a remarkable success".

People have a great ability to forget. Bush and Cheney will probably not be remembered for their war crimes.

Bush will not be remembered for trashing the US economy, turning the modest surplus left by Bill Clinton into a trillion-dollar deficit. (He may be remembered as the president who taught us all to count up to a trillion.) He may not go down in history as the man on whose watch the Great Depression of the 21st century started. In whose presidency, the rich got a little less rich but the poor got a whole lot poorer.

Future generations may not recall Bush's blatant refusal to pursue any measures to protect the environment. Not even this cheery farewell to fellow leaders after a G8 summit meeting: "Goodbye from the world's biggest polluter".

The fact that the Bush organisation brought the US electoral system into disrepute in Florida in November 2000 has already been largely forgotten.

So, what will people associate with the Bush years?

A president who skilfully avoided a shoe thrown at him by an Iraqi journalist. A politician who had a photo opportunity at a reading class in a school and who was pictured holding the book upside down.

A world leader whose major contribution at the Gleneagles G8 summit was to go for a ride on a bike and run over a policeman.

A president who choked on a pretzel, fell off the sofa, and clunked his head on a coffee table on the way down.

Primarily, George W will be remembered in print and on YouTube for his Bushisms. The most gifted of scriptwriters on the Late Show or the Daily Show could not have come up with: "Families is where our nation finds hope, where wings take dream."

Or, speaking of the plight of single moms: "I know how hard it is for you to put food on your family." Not to mention "I know the human being and fish can coexist peacefully."

Even as he winds down as president, Bush has not lost the knack for malapropagation and mis-speak. "Anyone engaging in illegal financial transactions will be caught and persecuted," he said recently of the chaos which has engulfed the US banking system.

He also said: "I'll be long gone before some smart person ever figures out what happened inside this Oval Office." But a number of analysts, commentators and biographers have already been on his case in print. A tome called The Bush Tragedy by Jacob Weisberg is but one example.

What we know for sure about President Bush is that he is very fond of his dog. You will probably have seen some of those White House Christmas video messages starring Barney, the Bush family's black Scottie dog.

George and Barney have these conversations. Well, the president talks and Barney replies via thought bubbles.

It is obvious that President Bush holds his canine partner in high esteem. This is logical since Barney, being a Scottish terrier, is endowed with intelligence, determination, and sensitivity.

If George W had spent more time talking with Barney and a lot less listening to Dick Cheney, he might have a legacy to be proud of.

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