THE FACTS: There have been two recessions during Bush's time in office. The first was a relatively mild downturn that began in March 2001 and lasted eight months, ending in November 2001. Since the first one did not begin until after he took office in January 2001, it is not strictly accurate to say he \"inherited\" it.
The second downturn began in December 2007 and has already lasted longer than any recession in a quarter century. If it does not end until the second half of this year, which many economists believe is likely, the current recession will have surpassed in length all other downturns of the post-World War II period.
As for his claim of 52 months of uninterrupted job growth, that is factual, although perhaps misleading in what it says about overall job growth during his term. Job growth after the 2001 recession did not resume on a sustained basis until September 2003, continuing until January 2007, a period of 52 months.
However, jobs have declined in every month since then. A staggering 2.6 million jobs disappeared in 2008, the most since World War II, and unemployment hit a 16-year high of 7.2 percent in December.
Overall, during Bush's eight years in office, a net total of 3 million jobs were created. In the two terms of his predecessor, President Clinton, roughly 21 million jobs were generated.";
Bush_Legacy[i++] = new Array("","Hurricane Katrina","","","","", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", "");
Bush_Legacy[i-1].body = "\"You know, people said, well, the federal response was slow. Don't tell me the federal response was slow when there was 30,000 people pulled off roofs right after the storm passed. ... That's a pretty quick response.\"
THE FACTS: The president's defense is based on one very narrow measure in the 2005 storm's immediate aftermath. He ignored numerous other facets that depict a more sober picture.
There were 9,000 Louisiana families still living in trailers as of Sept. 1, 2007, and more than 30,000 residents of Gulf states receiving disaster housing assistance. Five of 23 acute-care hospitals in the New Orleans area remain closed. The city's bus system carries less than a third of its pre-storm passengers. Many neighborhoods remain largely vacant.
Bush noted that $121 billion in federal aid was approved. But much of that went to rescue operations and other short-term needs. The Louisiana Recovery Authority estimates that about $15 billion has been spent on rebuilding in the state.
Bush said New Orleans schools have improved, which is true. But of 125 public schools in New Orleans before Katrina, only about 85 remain.";
Bush_Legacy[i++] = new Array("","Middle East peace","","","","", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", "");
Bush_Legacy[i-1].body = "\"In 2002 ... I gave a speech about a two-state solution -- two states, two democracies living side by side in peace. And we have worked hard to advance that idea. ... Most people in the Middle East now accept the two-state solution as the best way for peace.\"
THE FACTS: Bush's 2002 speech calling for an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel did mark a surprisingly explicit and detailed endorsement of that idea by an American president. But he didn't mention that in those early years his administration put active peacemaking in a deep freeze and only tried to restart negotiations late in his term. In the years between, Israel expanded Jewish settlements on land claimed by the Palestinians for an eventual state, with only mild complaint from the United States.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has said the administration waited until the timing was better, meaning until after the death of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and the election of a moderate leader to succeed him. Bush wrote off Arafat early on, with advisers saying the PLO chief was corrupt and probably incapable of delivering a deal that Israel and its U.S. backers could live with.
But by the time the U.S. made Mideast peace a diplomatic priority, conditions were changing again. Bush pushed Arafat's successor, Mahmoud Abbas, to hold elections in early 2006 that Abbas feared, correctly, would legitimize his rivals in the Islamic Hamas movement. Hamas is now in control of the Gaza Strip, splitting the territory and people Abbas theoretically governs.
Bush sponsored a high-level peace conference in late 2007, and visited Israel and the West Bank in early 2008. Rice stopped by often to check on secret negotiations between Abbas' West Bank leadership and Israel.
Hamas is now at war with Israel in Gaza, in the most intense fighting in years. Israel may succeed in wounding Hamas leadership and its ability to fire rockets into Israel, but it probably cannot defeat the well-organized group outright. In the meantime, civilian deaths in Gaza erode Palestinian support for negotiations.";
Bush_Legacy[i++] = new Array("","Iraq war","","","","", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", "");
Bush_Legacy[i-1].body = "\"Putting a 'Mission Accomplished' on an aircraft carrier was a mistake. It sent the wrong message.\"
\"... Abu Ghraib obviously was a huge disappointment ... Not having weapons of mass destruction was a significant disappointment. I don't know if you want to call those mistakes or not, but they were; things didn't go according to plan, let's put it that way.\"
THE FACTS: The \"Mission Accomplished\" banner incident happened in May 2003, less than two months after Saddam Hussein was ousted. But it was not just the banner that drew criticism; the president also spoke on the carrier, saying that \"in the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed.\"
The abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq was blamed by administration officials on low-level soldiers. But a Senate report last December concluded that such abuse \"cannot simply be attributed to the actions of 'a few bad apples' acting on their own. The fact is that senior officials in the United States government solicited information on how to use aggressive techniques, redefined the law to create the appearance of their legality, and authorized their use against detainees.\"
The accusation that Saddam had and was pursuing weapons of mass destruction was Bush's main initial justification for going to war. The administration used intelligence that later was found to be false.";
Bush_Legacy[i++] = new Array("","Prisoners at Guantanamo Bay","","","","", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", "");
Bush_Legacy[i-1].body = "\"I understand that Gitmo has created controversies. But when it came time for those countries that were criticizing America to take some of those -- some of those detainees, they weren't willing to help out.\"
THE FACTS: At Guantanamo, the administration defied international treaties governing the treatment of war criminals to indefinitely detain, and without charges, terror suspects captured overseas.
The suspects won the right to challenge their detention in a Supreme Court ruling last June. In November 2007, federal courts began ordering some suspects released after ruling that the U.S. had no right to hold them.
Most of the 250 or so remaining detainees come from Yemen, but others are from Azerbaijan, Algeria, Afghanistan, Chad, China and Saudi Arabia.
Officials from France, Germany, Portugal and Switzerland have all recently said they are looking into accepting detainees from the U.S. prison. Australia has refused.";
Bush_Legacy[i++] = new Array("","Security and personal freedoms","","","","", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", "");
Bush_Legacy[i-1].body = "\"In terms of the decisions that I had made to protect the homeland, I wouldn't worry about popularity. ... All these debates will matter not if there's another attack on the homeland. The question won't be, you know, 'Were you critical of this plan or not?' The question is going to be, 'Why didn't you do something?'\"
THE FACTS: The administration authorized a secret surveillance program to let investigators eavesdrop on terror suspects in the U.S. without first obtaining a court warrant. A federal judge in Detroit ruled the so-called Terrorist Surveillance Program unconstitutional and the Justice Department scaled it back to bring it under the review of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.
Bush also held the line on numerous attempts by Congress to rein in the CIA's interrogation, detention and extraordinary rendition program. He signed an executive order in 2007 deeming it compliant with a law requiring all detainees to be treated humanely, and in March 2007 vetoed an intelligence authorization bill that would have limited the CIA's interrogations to only those methods approved by the U.S. military.
Terrorists have not struck the U.S. since 2001. Bush's central promise to get al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden \"dead or alive\" remains unfulfilled.";
Bush_Legacy[i++] = new Array("","Climate change","","","","", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", "");
Bush_Legacy[i-1].body = "\"I guess I could have been popular by accepting Kyoto, which I felt was a flawed treaty, and (instead I) proposed something different and more constructive.\"
THE FACTS: Most developed countries signed the 1997 Kyoto accord on climate change, which requires signatories to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide and other gases tied to warming.
In the United States, Bush was not alone in his criticism of Kyoto -- Senate Republicans and Democrats unanimously refused to endorse it because China and India were not required to cut emissions. But over the years many Democrats came to see the Kyoto process as worthy of pursuing, and they urged the Bush administration to rejoin international talks.
Bush instead argued for voluntary steps by nations and companies, and started a separate series of climate talks.";
// END editorial data