[ cheers and applause ] >> thank you. i was last in washington on january 20, of 2009 for the presidential inauguration. in my breast pocket was a picture of my great grandmother, leontine ellen, a woman born into slavery in 1846 in st. james parish, louisiana. it is fitting that i return to washington tonight with my granddaughters in an area known as the ellipse because this is a full circle moment. one of the greatest joys of my job is the opportunity to share my life experiences to the parks

education and community outreach programs. i cannot wait to get back and tell everyone about this most special one in this season of open and promise, reflection and celebration it is my honor to present to you the president of the united states. barack obama. [ cheers and applause ] . >> merry christmas, everybody! [ cheers and applause ] thank you, betty, far introduction, for your

extraordinary service as one of our park rangers and for all of your and your great grandmother's contributions to this country. please give betty a big round of applause. [ cheers and applause ] i want tips from betty on how i can look that good at 94. i also want to thank betty's boss jonathan jarvis and for everybody from the national park service and the national park foundation for everything that they do to protect and care for america's great outdoors. and for helping us find our park this year and every year and thank you, reese witherspoon. [ cheers and applause ] and each of tonight's outstanding performers. now this is, of course, the most wonderful time of the year, but

we would be remiss not to take a moment to remember our fellow americans whose hearts are heavy tonight. who grieve for loved ones, especially in san bernardino, california. their loss is our loss, too. for we're all one american family. we look out for each other. in good times and in bad and they should know that all of them care about them this holiday season. they're in our thoughts, they're in our prayers and we send them our love. now, this is the 93rd time americans have gathered by the white house to light the national christmas tree. as always, this tree is not alone. all across america in living

rooms and offices, churches and town squares families and neighbors are gathering to decorate trees of their own and get into the holiday spirit. it's a chance to come together and to focus on what really matters, the simple gifts of family and friends. the wonder and hope in a child's eye and, of course, the spirit of giving and compassion that can help all of us find new meaning in the world around us: that's the message of the child whose birth families like mine celebrate on christmas a prince born in a stable who taught us that we should love our neighbors as ourselves and that we are our brother's keeper and our sister's keepers. that we should feed the hungry, visit the stick, welcome the

stranger. these are the lessons of jesus christ, they're also the bedrock values of all faiths. values to be cherished and embraced not only during the holidays but to be practiced in our daily lives. so during this holiday season, let's come together as brothers and sisters around the humanity that we share. let's reach out to those who can use a hand. let's summon the spirit of togetherness that's always helped to kindle america's shining example to the world and let's keep in our prayers those americans who protect that idea. especially those stationed far from home during the holidays. our men and women in uniform and their families sacrificed so much for us. and it's because of them that we can celebrate freely, that we can worship as we please, that

we can come together on a night like this strong and united and free. so on behalf of michelle and malia and sasha and grandma and bo and sunny, happy holidays to all of you. may god bless you all and may god bless the united states of america. implementing obama administration immigration policies. and an update on the world energy outlook. the labor department reports that employers added 211,000 jobs last month, leaving the unemployment rate at 5% for the second straight month. the associated press writes that this makes it even more likely the federal reserve will raise interest rates later this month. you can hear more about the economy from federal reserve chair janet yellen in testimonye week on tol hill this c-span.org. and now joining us on "the

washington journal" is a guest we've had on relatively frequently. this is linda robinson on the wy rand corporation. she's also an author. i linda sirobinson, where were yo last? >> i think we're going to this about isil today, so i have been out in the region this year. i've been to iraq, jordan, and d kuwait. in iraq, ith visited all the various units that were doing k. the advisory and training work y out ou wthere. >> now are you working with the pentagon in your current role? >> so rand is a nonprofit, nonpartisan research institution. it works for bulk anyone, but d say probably the bulk of its work is for the u.s. governmente and of that the biggest part is u get dod research. >> so when you're out in the field, do you get a sense of who's fighting who? who's winning? >> it's so complex, so i think that's very important to establish. it is in my view we've had a

number of iraqi units over the past year that we've been able to -- the u.s. military has thea re-engaged with and is starting to understand their exact state because there was a loss of visibility of who was leading ty these units, what their capability was, what kind of equipment they had, and it runs the gamut. the best out there are the iraqt special operations forces. up or they're called the counterterrorism service. and i actually watched that unit grow up over my many visits.theh and they became the most proficient unit and they still are. hig they've been in every battle. they've suffered a lot of losses. they need a lot of equipment, s. that's the high end. the low end are units that , complete ll ll ll lly disintegre

and we're re-engaged again withr those.no and i think that thatw, is reala where the main hope rests right now, but because you need a hold force, as they say, you need units enough mass of indigenous forces to be onis -- keeping th peace after a clearing operation, so it's very important to be working with the full gamut of units. and we can talk more about the shia militias and the sunni a wl tribal forces as we go forward. then syria, gro of ups.course, f whole different stew of groups thatst: we're working with and can talk about that. >> linda robinson, we're going

to put a map up. if you could, explain looking at this map where u.s. forces might be. it's a map of iraq, but it showr the surrounding area as well and they'll put it in your monitor over here, but you can see it right over here as well. you can go right ahead and look at this one. >> it is -- the u.s. advisory role -- and i should throw out t few facts here. there have been 3500 u.s. military in iraq over the past n year. that includes special operations forces, conventional military, i and an and couple of thousand coalition partners doing three things basically. n train and equip onorth six site. most of them are around baghdadr inound t the kurdistan region.ce

then there's the advisory mission, and this is where the a specialtt operations forces havn beentioned heavily devoted and s with the units i mentioned. the iraqi special operations forces is a very mixed unit. a lot of times people just assume that things are broken down into the various sects. this is the one unit in iraq that has the full complement of shia, sunni, and kurd. our special operations forces hb andee coalition special operatin forces have been out advising, but they haven't -- they've been very restricted in where they're been able to be and what they've been able to do. i would characterize the advisory mission as having a kurd up the headquarters level.v a lot of people in the field have been pushing to get the

advisory mission happening at lower levels, brigade level and below. and this is very important because you need advisers from d the ministry of defense level all the way down to the field in orderhings to have that full e on the unit. and they're doing things -- a un lot of the debate here in the revolved, i think, unfortunately around joint terminal air forces.it is those guys we put on the ground to call air strikes. that's just one element of an advisory mission. that i think is where we're is s headed now is too expanding th- there's also, i think, a new use that's being authorized by the u.s. government to have the troops out in a combat role. tha and i think it will just be thiy

special operations expeditionary force. >> how quickly will those troops be added to what's already over there? >> the exact date isn't known.bo we don't know when they're actually going to get on the ground, but it will be soon. i think what you have heard consistently from both secretary carter and the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff -- i do think it's important while we're entering a newhave phase now to point out these special operations forces have been e year working in these various ways, and the

embl emblematic region people have mentioned is syria. theycaptured a huge trove of intelligence a information. and that's the key reason for sl these raids is they're going to yield a huge trove ofthen intelligence and capture isil ew members that can then be interrogated. that is going to greatly expand the knowledge of who's doing st what in that network and allow e targeting. hopefully something on the scale or rapidity of what was being done in iraq during the days ofa the surge where you got a huge effect on the network by having multiple raids at night and having this information come in and before it gets cold people t are moving onhe it.have in iraq they're going to do in in conjunction with these iraqil

forces. operations . in syria, they'll be doing unilateral. i should say when it is a case i of a u.s. hostage, they will ros always reserve the right to do a unilateral mission. >> linda robinson is our guest, and we're talking about u.s. strategy, more troops into the iraqi region to fight isis/isil, however you want to refer to it. >> caller: yes.of good morning. let me say this. first of all, we could get rid n of isis in one day of truman an. ike were around. they would drop an atomic bomb h in eseraqqah.ple is we did that in vietnam. the reason why we don't get ridh

of these people is who are we going to fight. we have a $700 billion militarye budget. wepe need to keep that up. we need 500,000 soldiers. >> i think wegues got the point sam. were you able to hear that, linda robinson? >> yes, i was. >> we could handle this in one p day or a shortow period of time. >> obviously, the u.s. has a tremendous amount of fire power and we have been conducting an air war.physic i didn't mention that, and we can talk about that more. what you achieve from the air is physical destruction and if you don't have the rules of things engagement that have been c applied, you can have mass civilian casualties. there's also this central question of then what. who is going to come along er behind to guarantee the peace rt andd that ensure these areas doe become a terrorist sanctuary s leave or minute youin stop bombing and that's why in e

approach is being taken to work through indigenous forces in iraq and syria so you have an end game. i think that's why there's a lot of disappointment about u.s. military activities over the i past year. the end game can take a long while. it can take a generation to work with these forces and build enough competency there so they can do it, but i think there's a great deal ofd, paris frustratie wake of the various terrorist attacks that have been occurred, paris being the most notable, but also we had the russian jet shot down in egypt. so i think there's a desire right now to just quickly finish the problem.ey hav isil, islamic state, is the group's own term for itself. they are heavily dug in. well ov they have fortified these cities they've been holding now for well over a year. these are going to take a long

time to recapture and most importantly hold with capable ground forces. >> charles, ohio, independent line. please go ahead. >> caller: good morning, sir. i find it amazing that the guest you have on will not call what happened indo tha santa barbara terrorist attack. those people didn't do that on the spur of the moment. are >> you know what, charles, i have to move on. because we're done talking about what happened in san bernardino andu. we've moved on and we're talking about the current u.s. policy towards syria and iraq oh and possibly more troops headed over there. linda robinson, when youat hear the term boots on the ground, what does that mean to you? we've got 3500 people over there already. we're sending another 6500 overv >> yes, i'm delighted that you brought this up because this hai

bothered me from the beginning when this term was used.ng and it's d a vague term that only creates confusion.urse, as it's very harmful to any public understanding and debate about what we're doing.ad the bootsver ther on the ground had 3500 advisers over there.wo they all have boots on.ry they're all u.s.men. military i uniform. i would say the majority of them are combat arms and infantry men. if you were to employ them in a combat mode, they would be combat troops, but they're all qualified to conduct combat. as i listen to the debate over the authorization for the u.s. of military force and read all the congressional testimony over the pastrm to year, i believe t administration employed that term to mean it was not going to count any option of sending large combat formations, brigades, formations, cores, over to fight in the front of --

they were not going to take the leading role in combat.st we've crossed the line now, i an think, into combat. there was the first combat deat with the u.s. special operations forces participating with the kurdish special operations raid on a prison to free the captives there.kurd and the delta soldier died in coming forward to help the kurds who were bogged down. that was not a planned activityo but thatw in crossed the line ae we're now in a combat mode. but what i believe the administration intends is to remain keeping the iraqi and syrians in the lead, but in these raids the u.s. special operations forces are going to be allowed to participate in combat if and as needed.less the the more competent the ground force is, the less the u.s.

force is needed. i should point out the counterterrorism service that i mentioned, the iraqi special operations forces, they have 14 jpacs. there's not as proficient. theed use of the english langua is very important. that's the language of air emphs power. you growi do need to have a com effort at this stage. the emphasis is on growing the capability of the iraqis. polic >> go ahead. >> caller: the policies that hii she'ss talking about, it's mor or less, well, everything's worked well and everything else. i know you don't want to talk about the shooting, but it is ey related. when the u.s. is seeing they're not doing much about isis and

they're not going to vet -- i talked to the guy on c-span. he voted that bill down to vet these people. what are the united states citizens supposed to do? my daughter now wants a gun for her birthday -- i mean for a rot christmas. >> i would say i think the paris attacks have evoked a fear and it is a real fear that isil is now moving into a phase of focusing more on external attacks than attacks in iraq anx syria. ofviewt. them is they shift -- they will attack where expedient. we've seen that within iraq over the past year when they were t attacked inar tikrit. they didn't stand and fight. they melted away and they begang attacking ramadi. appro there are three options. on an b containment, standing off and using air power and not getting

involved.believ there's the building of forces on the ground. then there's direct military intervention that i believe there is very little support for among either party to go in and do that, but there is agreement that you've got to deal with thh iraq/syria problem and the fromw amount of territory they're holding because that's really the central base from which all of this emanates and where most of the foreign fighters are enti gravitatingne to. >> shawn sommerland, florida, independent line. what do you think? >> caller: good morning. discuss let's be realistic about this. this entire discussion and our h actionsat are predicated on a cg premise. that premise is we originally went in tohe get the weapons of mass destruction. there were no such things.ted sc all of the actions that have been created since then have tho been destructive.f they've been ruinous for the e n

nation. and here we gobu again stepping into a place where we have no g business being, making mistakes that are going to lead to further mistakes down the road. what is necessary is for us to take a brave step and step out u of there.ch a where there's the need for humanitarian help, we are there to protect and help as much as we can, but we have no business being there. we are there because we made mistakes and this is not going to end and this intellectual discussion is all predicated onu a premise. >> those with long memories as f this caller certainly has, the original sin of the invasion inh iraq in 2003 t was this premise there were weapons of we destruction, which turned out to be incorrect. time has passed now and we did

fight a very large war there. we withdrew. isil rose up out of the ashes i and it holds more territory with more people, more guns, more than anything we've ever seen. in reaction to what the caller said, i think there's been an e effort, but probably not a sufficient effort to ask the ino arab countries to do more because they do.and those surrounding countries have the greater interest and you see, for example, saudi arabia l has been very itpreoccupied by s own military operation in yemenn which is on its peninsula and is directly south. middle but saudi arabia is the big doge ind the arab middle east and sy needs to be doing more.fter m it finally opened an embassy ina baghdad afterd many years.nmentt they've been holding the baghdad government at arm's length and e it's very important, i think, for the arab world to step up.

likewise, we've had difficulty with turkey, which is the main route for foreign fighters and material and the oil smuggling into thsyria. so the engine of isil passes through turkey.se and there's been a consistent effort to try to get more cooperation from these countries and much more needs to be done.d the more they do, the less the e u.s. and the european and other allies need to do. but i think everyone's galvanized right now by the idee that this group left alone is not going to do anything but get bigger and conduct more attackst so the question is what's an effective attack. if i could say in response to that previous caller, i view our effort over the last years as t. insufficient. i don't think it's the wrong approach, but i think the advisers were too'restricted. they were restricted to very feo areas. they've had to be very d co sequesteredpe w away from the s militi

militias. there's also been a very slow equipment pipeline. this equipment has to be they delivered much more quickly. they need humvees.adios. they need anti-tank weapons. they need securebecause radiose that i ha they've just now delivered line charges because the isil units l are ringing these cities with multiple iuds. they're there's a real need to speed up the material and the u.s. system has been far too slow. the production line of humvees in this country is back at a peacetime level. these are all thingsn th the department of defense needs to focus and. they did it in the early days of the iraq war when there weren'tt enough. they are bolting on armor to t humveesef to survive these masse

bombs. and it's not just ading a matte sending a few hundred or thousand more, although i do think more advisers, but more id importantly distributed geographically, and distributed throughout the units we're trying to support.re fac >> what do you think about the narrative that the iraq war is the direct link cause of what we're facing today? >> well, you know -- so iraq was being governed by a dictator saddam hussein. desert storm pushed saddam hussein army out of there, contained, if you will, through a no-fly zone, sort of suppressing the threat. at some point that was probably a dictatorship that was going to end in one form or another.goino and when that did, of course,

the shia majority are going to take control of that country.ry we've been involved in a very long running process of change in iraq. kurdist many people just assume it is fly apart into three he parts, kurd, shia, and sunni. i think the question is still open. what kind of new national identity will iraqis, shia and sunni, form? the only path to a stable iraq h i see is eventually another province in the sunni areas in f the north and orwest. we want it to be over. we may assume responsibility for havingheless i exacerbated it, nonetheless it's the drama of that country and history only ee moves at a a certain pace. we can do things to make it i

worse.e in c i believe more active diplomatic engagement might help.peting we sometimes say the iranians are in charge now. sup they have so much influence, but we're not even competing in the influence game in my view. the iraqi government has been asking for our help. i i think that would gain more influence to help some of these things lohappen., >> thanks for holding.. you're on with linda robinson of rand. >> caller: hello, sir. hello, ma'am. a young man called a short whilh ago named sam, i believe. he touched on something that i e agree with. we seem to be himming and hawing around too much about what we're doing. if we're goingmili to fight a w let's do it with resolve. he said something about the military budget, which i believe is beside the point.

it's about protecting our collective livelihood and our rights as a nation. and i believe a lot of times thn when wek make these decisions, don't think we think them through necessarily all the way through. i just think we need to make sure we're doing the right thing and when we do it, do it 100%.bt that's all i'm saying. thank you. >> obviously, everyone tries to make the right decisions, but wc can't always understand the effects of our actions.at has i would share a critique, i think, that the caller is making that what has been done over the last year really until just a few weeks ago has been too for minimal, but also as changes have been made, they've been very incremental. for example, when i was in iraqd a decision was finally made to send a few advisers out to a

base in anbar. and people had beena agitating for this within the u.s. military for a while to get these advisers more distributed to get in contact with these units, start advising them, start coordinating them, and that was a very slow decision in coming. and i'm concerned nowthough a tn though a series ofot b decision have apparently been taken, it's important that they not be incremental. i think it's important to insufy the insufficiency, get enough people out there in will enoughf places, but not ricochet off es into a major combat roll. i think the long-term effects of that -- it creates dependency. i may create more recruitment of isil fighters. it gets the u.s. into a combat mode when it is leading. whenever the u.s. gets into thea lead, it tends to be the type a

personality and it doesn't let the host country come along to do what it needs to do to develop. >> caller: i'm an independent. i dialled the wrong number. here's my comment. we send people, money, equipment. a kno bunchw th of the money, t equipment, got turned over to the exact people we don't want to have it. they have a magazine. they have a warehouse., as muc we tried surgical intervention. and unfortunately as much as i would like a diplomatic solutioi with the host country, stepping up and doing their job on their own -- we're always responsible for everybody's problem -- to o just knock it off. burn it down and start over.f

why have a prolonged world war 3 iii when we don't have to?th >> the answere i think is what happens next. sai you can go in big and heavy. you can burn it down, as the caller said, but they're still going to be a country. i think having a farsighted di approach is important. that said -- and i'mas worried i that theed current approach is being discredited because it has been so minimally applied. there's something between what we've been doing and an onslaught that the u.s. opens up its guns, levels towns.forward. i think it's very important to consider the impact and the cost of rebuilding this country as

the war goes forward, but a greater intensification i think is at least worth trying. i frankly do not think that a large scale combat deployment -- we're talking 100,000 troops, v. those kinds of numbers. i think they could have very negative effects than positive. >> carrie urges deft removal of assad to crush isis. secretary kerry says in an d wie agreement can be reached, a coalition of americans, russians, and syrian forces could wipe out the islamic state in aourse, matter of literally . >> we've been talking mostly about iraq and that is hideousle complex. syria part is even more hideou complex. there's the isis war in the eastern part of the country. we don't have a map up, but the

isis self-declared capital is te raqqah. the syrian kurds primarily have been able toa squeeze down thatr territory that isil holds, but , it is still largely in charge. it has a lot of oil. >> and that's in the iraqi border area, correct?lf >> that's right. if you laook rou at syria, it i the green area, that is isil e t territory with thehe syrian kur up on the northern part on the border with turkey.key, they've been gaining territory and starting to close off that o border with turkey, although there's still -- i think it's about 45 miles, 90 kilometers still in the hands of isis. so that still have a conduit to

and from turkey. over in the western half of the country, that's where most of the population is.ab spr the regime of assad has been int power and it was one of those hg arab spring countries where people rose up against him and he began crushing them brutally. 250,000 syrians are now dead. ky it's the source of most of the refugee crisis that europe is t suffering.he secretary kerry has launched a i diplomatic effort to tryn to gm the various countriese involved in this complicated war to come together around a scheme that will plot a transition for assad to leave. this has been a long standing desire to have assad leave, have a diplomatic resolution, get a b new government, and focus everyone's attention on attacking isil. a lot ofgett thein arab countri turkey are more interested in

fighting assad and getti intingd out. we had the russian intervention there, which is shocking and noe has furtherdi complicated the situation. russia has always had a base onf the med terrainian coast. start they brought in massive air power, ground defense, troops.li they saw assad starting to wobble. mostly the islamic extremist groups are the ones that have been gaining because once again we have been very minimalist in the support we've been willing w to provide in theak people fighting assad. the question is whether russia, in the wake of thee attackwakes people, the russian jet bombing in egypt, is going to make putin, the russian president, a partner in the fight against isil.

right now, t heo shor has been the syrian opposition aimed at assad. he is trying to shore up assad,, protect that space, and re-enforce assad's grip on the intern country. so it is a question in my mind s whether russia isupport there m indefinitely to prop up a regime that has no popular support similarly to iran, or are they ready to join a diplomatic effort and start fighting isil. some people are willing for m russia to join in the bombing a campaign, let them continue to do what they're doing in the western syria, but i would say first we haven't seen russia te bomb very much aty all of the

isil facilities, but they're also using dumb bombs. we have precision bombs. britain just joined the air fr campaign inan syria. we have high-tech equipment ando high-techst allies. i don't think russia is the game-changer for isil in syria. >> linda robinson's most recent book. next call for her comes from rachel in forney, texas. >> caller: a lot of people believe that isis sprang up when obama pulled our troops out of iraq, but we allit h knew that e didn't happen just all of a andc sudden. when we got t ther. into iraq, they was already over there. and we trained them. decid i knew that there's something is going on because bush o -- theyt decided to surge because they es

knew they were over their heads. there was a bigger problem than they thought it was, and we the train these people. but it upsets me when we're having people attack us and people are going around talking about how weak our president is. it does not make us look good e and it makes them want to come over and attack us., are >> rachel, we're going to leave it right there. with all these interrelationships, are there isil/isis fighters that were at one point u.s. allies?ch of >> no.ip was d in fact a lot of the isil leadership was detained by the u.s. army back when it was in iraq. true certainly that isil grew out of the ashes of al qaeda in iraq, which sprang up -- it was very largely sunni and bathist, but it had a heavy

component.ired al zarqawi came from jordan.of e the core leadership remains iraqi and many of them were former sunni-bathists. so saddam hussein's former people. but when we came in and toppled saddam, they went into the opposition. people wonder if there was a different path. this if we had a different strategy g with regard to the bathist, er: might we have forestalled this l entire situation. >> hi, phillip. >> caller: hey. how are you doing? >> please go ahead. >> caller: yes, i have a coupler of questions for linda.ho in history, how many air

campaigns have ever won a war? >> why do you ask that questioni phillip? >> caller: because it's been brought up we're launching in all kinds of air strikes. how many special forces have ever won a war? >> given your rhetorical questions, we'll get an answer tota those.my that question that you ask, what is your point? >> caller: my point is it takes an army to defeat an army. >> great. we got it. >> air power has degraded some of the capabilities and assisted the ground forces, but it has been very constrained. the opening of a base in turkey

to bombers is huge because that has radically cut out the time.y it alone does not win a war. there are some air power advocates that think you can win wars by air, but i think there' large literature and evidence : against that. i think it is very important to know that it is one component of the strategy going forward. >> and cordell in kansas city, kansas. you are the last call.. >> caller: ms. robinson?especi >> yes. >> caller: yes. i want to ask you two questions. the people that's coming over here, especially the men, why can't the men stay there and fight for their homes?, whic the second question is they wers talking about sending the men home, which is the people in th. united states said bring our our

troops oohome. and they keep on blaming him for bringing the troops home. we wanted our troops to come i home. why can't the men stay there ano fight for their own country? thank you. >> i think that you are correct. certainly president obama campaigned on ending the wars and it's been very important tor him to bring u.s. service people home. i have been in iraq. 18 visits to iraq over the to o years. there are iraqis that want to fight for their country, and they need support from their own government to do so and they n o from other countries to do so. i think your question, though, also involves the refugee population. of course we've seen in syria particularly just utter devastation through indiscriminate bombing that's led to the massive internal many

displacement and external displacement. h we've alsoer eff had, i think, e syrians. we wanted them only to fight isil. so very few came forward in that train and equip program because, they want to get rid of assad.tw some of them are willing to fight both, but we had a litmus test that excluded people that said they were going to go and t fight 'assad.of i think you would have more people fighting if you were willing to say let's a concernew approach to this problem. >> france, britain, other middle east countries fighting in this area. how much of a muddle is this, or is it pretty clear cut? >> there are 65 countries in the coalition, but really only 24 om doing actual things with this g

problem we've been talking about and a smaller subset of that bia conducting airp, strikes and sending trainers and advisers in, but there is a substantial number. the big gap is saudi arabia and turkey, frankly. what are they willing to do? we've been waiting on turkey, which presumably was going to try to seal that border and possibly help protect any safe zone that might be created in se syria. there were a number of things that have been on the table, son i think there's a possibility ofecruitme some of those allies to step up. i think, of course, in the t information campaign and the recruitmenthe campaign to try t stem the recruitment of these would-be isil fighters, the arat world, but ong ga mostly theme arab sunni world needs to grapple with that problem seriously.sume that's really the long game here. >> okay. final tweet. wild and wonderful says let's

assume isil is removed and assad defeated.. to whom do we turn over to power? without that element, it's a waste. >> that's a very important if question. a confederate formulation is most likely to emerge if syria remains as an intact state.es. you might have a bunch of microstates. i think the future is really ru unknown, but it's unlikely to come back and certainly under the rule of a minority, a shiite ruler. >> we appreciate you coming over. an update now on the investigation into the shootings in san bernardino, california from attorney general loretta lynch and fbi director james comey. >> well, good afternoon, everyone. thank you for coming over. i've