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 grandmothers 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 bettys 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 americas 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 tonights 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 were 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. Theyre in our thoughts, theyre 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. Its 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 childs eye and, of course, the spirit of giving and compassion that can help all of us find new meaning in the world around us thats 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 brothers keeper and our sisters keepers. That we should feed the hungry, visit the stick, welcome the stranger. These are the lessons of jesus christ, theyre 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, lets come together as brothers and sisters around the humanity that we share. Lets reach out to those who can use a hand. Lets summon the spirit of togetherness thats always helped to kindle americas shining example to the world and lets 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 its 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 cspan. Org. And now joining us on the washington journal is a guest weve had on relatively frequently. This is Linda Robinson on the wy rand corporation. Shes also an author. I linda sirobinson, where were yo last . I think were going to this about isil today, so i have been out in the region this year. Ive 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 youre out in the field, do you get a sense of whos fighting who . Whos winning . Its so complex, so i think thats very important to establish. It is in my view weve had a number of iraqi units over the past year that weve been able to the u. S. Military has thea reengaged 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 theyre 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 theyve been in every battle. Theyve suffered a lot of losses. They need a lot of equipment, s. Thats the high end. The low end are units that , complete ll ll ll lly disintegre and were reengaged 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 its 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 were working with and can talk about that. Linda robinson, were going to put a map up. If you could, explain looking at this map where u. S. Forces might be. Its a map of iraq, but it showr the surrounding area as well and theyll 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 theres 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 SpecialOperations 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 havent theyve been very restricted in where theyre been able to be and what theyve 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 theyre 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. Thats just one element of an Advisory Mission. That i think is where were is s headed now is too expanding th theres also, i think, a new use thats 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 whats already over there . The exact date isnt known. Bo we dont know when theyre 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 its important while were 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 thats the key reason for sl these raids is theyre 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 whos 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 theyre going to do in in conjunction with these iraqil forces. Operations. In syria, theyll 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 were 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 dont 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 didnt mention that, and we can talk about that more. What you achieve from the air is physical destruction and if you dont have the rules of things engagement that have been c applied, you can have mass civilian casualties. Theres 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 thats why in e approach is being taken to work through indigenous forces in iraq and syria so you have an end game. I think thats why theres 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 theres 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 theres a desire right now to just quickly finish the problem. Ey hav isil, Islamic State, is the groups own term for itself. They are heavily dug in. Well ov they have fortified these cities theyve 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 didnt do that on the spur of the moment. Are you know what, charles, i have to move on. Because were done talking about what happened in San Bernardino andu. Weve moved on and were 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 . Weve got 3500 people over there already. Were sending another 6500 overv yes, im delighted that you brought this up because this hai bothered me from the beginning when this term was used. Ng and its d a vague term that only creates confusion. Urse, as its very harmful to any public understanding and debate about what were doing. Ad the bootsver ther on the ground had 3500 advisers over there. Wo they all have boots on. Ry theyre 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 theyre 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 weve 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 were 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 SpecialOperations Forces, they have 14 jpacs. Theres not as proficient. Theed use of the english langua is very important. Thats 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 shess talking about, its mor or less, well, everythings worked well and everything else. I know you dont want to talk about the shooting, but it is ey related. When the u. S. Is seeing theyre not doing much about isis and theyre not going to vet i talked to the guy on cspan. 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. Weve seen that within iraq over the past year when they were t attacked inar tikrit. They didnt 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 theres the building of forces on the ground. Then theres 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 youve got to deal with thh iraq syria problem and the fromw amount of territory theyre holding because thats 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 lets 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 theyve 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 theres 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 weve ever seen. In reaction to what the caller said, i think theres 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