On topics as diverse as Iraq, veterans care, education and AIDS relief, Bush has been using his final days in office to help shape how he is remembered.

Bush lauded his own administration for beefing up and reshaping its intelligence community, cutting off the assets of terrorist groups, and employing diplomacy to attract world partners. He even gave a rare shout out to his former defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, for leading the charge for a more nimble military.

Bush, who has recently expressed regret over the false intelligence that led to the Iraq war, did not mention the issue Tuesday. Instead, he characterized the U.S.-led invasion as a necessary act to remove a dangerous dictator, Saddam Hussein.

Bush also said that the results of his strategy of promoting democracy and civil societies to counter the ideology of extremist Islam — rather than taking what he called the easy option of installing “friendly strongmen” in places like Iraq — were “unfolding slowly and unevenly.”

Finally, while Bush mentioned the killing or capture of hundreds of al-Qaida members around the world, including Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the accused mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, he also noted that Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahri, whom Bush did not identify by name, have evaded capture.

The Washington Post and New York Times contributed to this report.

Is anyone really listening? Better yet, is anyone buying this line of bovine fecal matter?