Opinion:Just four months after 9/11, George Bush identified Iran, Iraq and North Korea as the "axis of evil" and declared that defanging these rogue regimes was America's most urgent national security task. Bush will be judged on whether he succeeded, writes Charles Krauthammer.
Six years later and with time running out on this administration, the Bush legacy is clear: one for three. Contrary to current public opinion, Bush will have succeeded on Iraq, failed on Iran and fought North Korea to a draw.
Let's look at Iran. Bush has thrown in the towel on Iran's nuclear programme because the intelligence bureaucracy, in a spectacularly successful coup, seized control of the policy with a National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) that very misleadingly trumpeted the claim that Iran had halted its nuclear programme. In fact, Iran only halted the least important component of its nuclear programme - weaponisation.
The hard part is the production of the nuclear fuel. Iran continues enriching uranium with 3,000 centrifuges at work in open defiance of UN Security Council resolutions. Once you have the necessary fuel, you can make the bomb in only a few months.
Thus to even speak of the Iranian programme as having been stopped while enrichment continues is absurd. And that is true even if you discount recent dissidents' reports that the weaponisation programme, suspended in 2003, in fact resumed the following year - which is contrary to the current NIE estimate, offered with only "moderate confidence," that it has never been restarted.
The administration had to immediately release and accept the NIE's sensational conclusions because the report would have been leaked and the administration then accused of covering up good news to justify going to war, the assumption being that George Bush and Dick Cheney have a Patton-like lust for the smell of battle.
The administration understands that the NIE's distorted message that Iran has given up pursuing nukes has not only taken any military option off the table but jeopardised any further sanctions against Iran.
Making the best of the lost cause, Bush will now go through the motions until the end of his term, leaving the Iranian bomb to his successor.
As for North Korea? We did get Kim Jong Il to disable his plutonium-producing programme. The next step is for Pyongyang to disclose all nuclear activities.
This means coming clean on past proliferation and on the clandestine uranium-enrichment programme North Korea had once admitted but now denies.
Knowing we have no credible threats against North Korea, we now come bearing carrots.
Bush writes a personal letter to Kim Jong Il, in essence entreating him to come clean on his nuclear programme so we can proceed to full normalisation.
Disabling the plutonium reactor is an achievement and we do gain badly needed intelligence by simply being there on the ground to inspect.
There is, however, no hope of North Korea giving up its existing nuclear weapons stockpile, and little assurance that we will find, let alone disable, any clandestine programmes. But lacking sticks, we take what we can.
But Iraq is a different story. Whatever our subsequent difficulties, our initial success definitively rid the world of Saddam Hussein and his monstrous sons.
The Hussein dynasty will not - as it would have in absence of the US invasion - rebuild, rearm and threaten the world.
The taking down of Saddam led directly to Libya's full nuclear disarmament and, undoubtedly, to Iran's 2003 suspension of weaponisation.
As for Iraq itself, after three years of disorientation, the US has finally found a winning counter-insurgency strategy.
It took Bush three years to find his general (as it also took Lincoln) and turn a losing war into a winnable one. Baghdad and Washington are currently discussing a long-term basing agreement that could give the United States a permanent military presence in the region and a close co-operative relationship with the most important country in the Middle East heartland - a major strategic achievement.
Nonetheless, the pressure on this administration and the next to get out prematurely will remain. There are those for whom our only objective in Iraq is reducing troop levels rather than securing a potentially critical Arab ally in a region of supreme strategic significance.
On North Korea and Iran, with no real options at hand, the Bush administration heads to the finish line doing what Sen George Aiken once suggested for Vietnam: declare victory and go home.
With no good options available, those decisions are entirely understandable. But if Bush or his successor does an Aiken on Iraq - where success is a real option - history will judge him severely.
letters@charleskrauthammer.com (c) 2007, The Washington Post Writers Group