Remember this photo? Now a former White House aide tells the back story

Democrats jumped on the issue, accusing the president of insensitivity to the suffering of hurricane victims and demanded that the president actually visit the storm-ravaged region instead of flying over it in Air Force One.

Even Senator John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee this year, has recently criticized the president's handling of the crisis, telling voters last month in New Orleans that the government's response had been "terrible and disgraceful."

"If I had been president, I would have ordered the plane landed at the nearest base and I'd of been over here," McCain said in April.

Now that photo, and the story of the bungled response to Hurricane Katrina, is back in the news again after Politico.com broke the story that former White House press secretary Scott McClellan criticizes Bush's response to the crisis in his new book What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception.

McClellan says the White House "spent most of the first week in a state of denial" after the hurricane hit, and he specifically takes aim at former White House political adviser Karl Rove. It was Rove who suggested the photo of the president looking out the window of his comfortable jet while thousands of Americans struggled to find shelter, food and water. McClellan says he and counselor to the president Dan Bartlett opposed the idea, but it happened anyway, according to Politico.

The photo op happened because "Karl was convinced we needed to do it -- and the president agreed," McClellan explains. "One of the worst disasters in our nation's history became one of the biggest disasters in Bush's presidency. Katrina and the botched federal response to it would largely come to define Bush's second term," McClellan writes.

But that's not where the story ends. McClellan is under fire today from the White House and GOP operatives who accuse him of disloyalty for writing the book and argue that the president's former chief spokesman is "disgruntled" and "bitter."

McClellan not only takes on the Administration's handling of the hurricane. He also faults the Bush White House for its handling of the Iraq War, arguing that Bush's "failure to be open and forthright on Iraq and rushing to war with inadequate planning and preparation for its aftermath" contributed to the perception against the Administration in responding to Katrina.

Although McClellan maintains, "I still like and admire President Bush," he says that the president and his advisers used "propaganda" to sell the war instead of leveling with the American people with "candor and honesty."