"George Bush looks like a busted flush, destined to be haunted by Iraq" (The Herald, January 24). This judgment is generous alongside views expressed last month in The Washington Post by five distinguished American scholars.

"George Bush looks like a busted flush, destined to be haunted by Iraq" (The Herald, January 24). This judgment is generous alongside views expressed last month in The Washington Post by five distinguished American scholars.

Most overtly scathing were articles by Eric Foner, the DeWitt Clinton professor of history at Columbia University, and Douglas Brinkley, director of the Roosevelt Centre at Tulane University.

"It's safe to bet," writes Brinkley, "that Bush will be forever handcuffed to the bottom rungs of the presidential ladder he has joined Hoover as a case study on how not to be President."

Professor Foner, too, places Bush on "the bottom rung", beside Franklin Pierce, James Buchanan, Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge.

Even in such company, Foner thinks "there is no alternative but to rank (Bush) as the worst President in US history".

Two other historians damn with faint praise. One rates him "the fifth worst", while another asserts that he is at least better than Nixon. Bush's best hope is the last: a fence-sitter, who considers it too early to say.

If that is how leading American historians view the Iraq war's architect, what do their UK peers say of his hod-carrier?

A Google search on "Bush worst ever President" gives 147 hits, while a corresponding one on Blair yields zero. Indeed, around the time of The Washington Post's survey of five historians, two UK counterparts on Radio 4's Today spoke favourably of Blair. Their grounds were that he had won three elections - one more than Ramsay MacDonald but one fewer than Harold Wilson.

That Blair has made the most disastrous political decision in the time of any UK citizen alive did not seem to be factored in.

Why? Could it possibly be due to the greater independence of US universities?

Thomas McLaughlin, 4 Munro Road, Jordanhill, Glasgow

I NOTE that George W Bush has just been ranked the 43rd "most able" President in history. Given that there have been only 43 in total this is less than inspirational.

Nor, after his latest State of the Union message, can anybody, surely, be surprised if he becomes 44th out of 43. Iraq, despite reports "au contraire", was centre-stage again.

The primary goal, the key casus belli, in invading Iraq, was establishing US hegemony in the region with "regime change" as its principal objective.

Thus Baghdad would be the first staging-post on the road to Jerusalem. That's always been my view. But those critics who argued that the Iraq war was fought for oil have been given great ammunition by a controversial law drawn up and directed by Washington and placed before the Iraqi parliament only 12 days ago.

Huge potential prizes will be available to permit western - ie, US and UK companies - to pocket/purloin up to 75% of oil profits.

As Vice-President Dick Cheney so aptly put it in 1999 when chief executive officer of Halliburton: "The Middle East is where the prize of oil ultimately lies." Iraq, with the third largest reserves in the world, connoted the lion's share of that prize.

So, a sectarian-riddled, militia-driven and corrupt puppet government which can establish neither security nor law and order, the sine qua non for any democracy worthy of the name, arrogantly legislates away that precious source of wealth, oil - representing 95% of the total Iraqi economy - for the next 30 years, dictated by and for the benefit of the occupying powers.

"The overwhelming majority of the population would be opposed to this," according to James Paul of Global Policy Forum, but that's democracy, Iraqi style. Perfidy doesn't do it justice.

Tony Blair made a promise (as usual) designed to pre-empt any such outcome. Proposing the parliamentary motion for war in 2003, he denied the "false claim" that "we want to seize" Iraq's oil revenues.

Perish the thought. Money would be "put into a trust fund" run by the UN, "for the Iraqis". This promise was as delusory as another given at the same moment, when he told parliament that he was "absolutely certain" that Saddam had WMD, his casus belli, lest we forget, a claim he repeated in March 2004 when he was still "absolutely sure", even after the 43rd worst President had given up believing so.

Has there been a worse Prime Minister since 1707?

Chris Walker, 21/23 Main Street, West Kilbride