From WNYC in New York, this is NPR's On the Media.

I'm Brooke Gladstone.

And I'm Bob Garfield. This week, while President Bush toured Africa bestowing American goodwill.

Back home, the war in Iraq was generating some bad vibes.

There's the fury of some military families over the mounting death toll in Iraq, the nagging questions

about the ever-elusive weapons of mass destruction, the administration admission that there's

no evidence that Saddam Hussein purchased uranium from Niger and the official rewrite of

the capture of Jessica Lynch. Thread by thread, the administration's tightly coordinated war message

appears to be unraveling. Journalist and former presidential advisor David Gergen joins me now. David,

welcome back to O.T.M. It's good to talk to you again, Bob. It seems that the White

House is just sputtering. The swagger and the confidence seem to be gone. Is that your take? And if so,

do you think that's going to have political consequences for the public at large?

I wouldn't go so far as to say the swagger is gone, but I would say that they're on the defensive.

And I think unless they come to grips with this, soon it will have political consequences.

I was surprised by the president this week while he was in Africa,

being fairly dismissive of the charge over Niger and whether the fabrication and what got

into his speech on the study of the union, rather than being defensive, I would have counseled

him to go on the offensive and to be angry about what happened within. Why in the Dickinson,

anybody let him say that? I start with a position that the president

himself thought it was true. Well, that's one place to start. There are other places to start.

Well, but if you assume that, then the natural response from somebody who's been misled by his own

administration is to be angry and let them head's roll for how this information got into his speech

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