What Hurts America's Image Abroad?

CNBC just had a segment discussing the question of whether and how our foreign policy is hurting our image abroad. I thought I would formulate my own poll question:

Have the dishonest statements by Democratic politicians and the biased coverage by the MSM about the treatment of prisoners at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib, the ridiculously inflated statistics of Iraqi civilian casualties, the inaccurate coverage of Katrina, the lies about why the US went to war, and the failure of the MSM to report the tremendous progress in Iraq and Afghanistan hurt the image of the US abroad?

UPDATE -- just noticed this Barone reference to Stephen Green's post about the war being all about media. Barone:

In this war, Green says, the critical factor is media. "It means, fighting a media war. It means, turning the enemy's one great strength into our own. Broadcast words, sounds, and images are the arm of decision in today's world." Here's the whole thing.

I think Green is on to something. Has the Bush administration done a good enough job getting our message out? I would say no. Have American (and European) mainstream media, with a mind-set adversarial to America, been a help or a hindrance? Hindrance.

Has the Democrats' preoccupation with pre-Iraq-war intelligence tended to delegitimize the United States' actions? Yes. What can and should be done about all this? That's a post for another day.

Bottom line -- MSM and Democrats hurt the war effort. How? Be hurting our image abroad.