Bush Asks Congress For $30 Billion To Help Fight War On Criticism

"...The Bush confidante, now undersecretary of state for public diplomacy, held a meeting with her staff in Foggy Bottom yesterday and was asked about the international ramifications of the response to the New Orleans flooding. The problem, Hughes replied, was not a failed relief effort but a foreign press that did not appreciate the federal government's good work.

"There are a lot of things being said about us around the world that aren't true," said the woman in charge of polishing the American image abroad. "We've marshaled the resources of our federal government" to help fellow Americans, she said, and if people think otherwise, "we need to aggressively challenge that idea around the world..."

...Ten days after Katrina struck, the administration and its critics faced credibility challenges. On one side, Bush and his aides continued to admit what even key Republicans in Congress have said: that the response to the hurricane was a debacle...

...Remarks by prominent Republicans have left the party on the defensive. The president's mother suggested that life in the Astrodome is "working very well" for impoverished evacuees. Sen. Rick Santorum (Pa.) suggested fines for people who didn't heed evacuation warnings. And House Speaker Dennis Hastert (Ill.) proposed bulldozing New Orleans.

Two-thirds of Americans say the administration botched the relief effort, a new Pew poll found, and only 40 percent approve of Bush's performance overall. Vice President Cheney was cursed out yesterday in Gulfport, Miss.

Yet the Bush administration, whether discussing Iraq or Katrina, remains unfailingly upbeat. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, introducing Hughes, said nothing of Katrina as she repeated the Bush mantra that "freedom is on the march."