Bush says government was ‘well-prepared’ for Rita

Bush, who is to be briefed here Sunday by Lt. Gen. Robert Clark, joint military task force commander for Hurricane Rita, said he was satisfied the government was “well-organized and well-prepared” to respond.

“Nobody asks for these things, but when they come, we have a duty,” Bush said Saturday at the Texas Emergency Operations Center in Austin. “I’m really here to let the folks in Texas know that the federal government knows we have a responsibility to support you in the mission of saving lives — first and foremost — and then help to rebuild their lives.”

In his weekly radio address broadcast, the president also pledged not to forget the massive job of rebuilding after Hurricane Katrina.

Bush was to spend part of Sunday in San Antonio where federal supplies and workers were being assembled for Hurricane Rita and then fly to Baton Rogue, La. The visits follow stops on Saturday in Texas and at the U.S. Northern Command in Colorado where he autographed a photo of himself gripping a bullhorn at Ground Zero three days after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.

Bush’s popularity soared after the attack and he was seen as a strong leader when he bellowed in New York to rescue workers: “I can hear you! The rest of the world hears you!”

But his job approval numbers today are at their lowest of his presidency, dragged down by ongoing violence in Iraq, high fuel prices and the federal government’s response to Hurricane Katrina.

After Katrina, which devastated the Mississippi coast and southeastern Louisiana on Aug. 29, Americans watched disturbing images of tens of thousands of people displaced from their homes in New Orleans, many waiting for food, water, medicine and others still awaiting rescue days later. The Bush administration was blamed by many for not doing more sooner.

This time, before Rita reached the coast, Bush was at NORTHCOM getting briefed on what the government was doing to prepare for the storm and its aftermath. The command, in the shadow of the Rocky Mountains, was established in 2002 as part of the government’s response to Sept. 11.

After breakfast, Bush got an hourlong briefing about flooding in eastern Texas and western Louisiana and potential disruptions to U.S. energy supplies. He also discussed with command leaders options for giving the armed forces a broader role in national disasters, White House press secretary Scott McClellan said.

Saturday’s travel kept Bush far from Washington, where ten of thousands of opponents of the war in Iraq were demonstrating. The crowd, shouting “Bush out now” and “Peace now,” marched in front of the White House and then to the Washington Monument in an 11-hour marathon of dissent.