Recent polling has found an improving assessment of George W. Bush's presidency, a measurement which could play a factor in how Jeb Bush would be viewed in future Republican primaries.
Martin Morse Wooster is senior fellow at the Capital Research Center and the author of Games Universities Play: And How Donors Can Avoid Them, published by the John W. Pope Center for Higher Education Policy, Raleigh, N.
The BBC's Jon Leyne in Washington says the US administration has been careful to play down the significance of an Iraqi offer it views with deep scepticism, and President George W Bush has left the capital for the weekend without commenting on it.