Face the Nation Transcripts: February 8, 2015: McCaul, Fauci, Donilon

(CBS News) -- A transcript from the February 8, 2015 edition of Face the Nation. Guests included: Charlie D'Agata, Holly Williams, Jordan's Minister of Media Affairs Mohammed al-Momani, Rep. Michael McCaul< former National Security Adviser Tom Donilon, Michael Morell, Dr. Anthony Fauci, Dr. Jon LaPook, Ruth Marcus, David Sanger, John Harris, and Nancy Youssef.

BOB SCHIEFFER: I'm Bob Schieffer. And today on the FACE THE NATION, overseas, what to do about ISIS, here at home what to do about measles. The fate of twenty-six-year-old American aid worker Kayla Mueller remains unknown but ISIS still says she was killed in the U.S.-led coalition airstrikes in Syria last week. But how is the war against ISIS going. We'll have reports from the region; then we'll turn to the chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee Michael McCaul, former CIA official Michael Morell and former Obama National Security Advisor Tom Donilon.

Then we'll turn to the sudden rise in measles in America. We'll talk about that with Anthony Fauci of the National Institutes of Health and our own Doctor Jon LaPook.

Plus, analysis on all of this and more because this is FACE THE NATION.

Good morning. And we are going first to CBS News correspondent Charlie D'Agata who joins us from Amman, Jordan. Charlie.

CHARLIE D'AGATA (CBS News Foreign Correspondent): Good morning, Bob. Today Jordanian officials say that their fighter jets have carried out dozens of airstrikes against suspected ISIS targets in Iraq and Syria. Over the past few days this is the bombardment retaliation for the gruesome execution of their pilot. King Abdullah had vowed there would be a relentless war against ISIS. And for most of the week we've seen him in combat fatigues directing this new offensive. We also spoke to Jordan's foreign minister, who told us this is going to go way beyond airstrikes.

NASSER JUDEH: And we're not going to divulge our plans but it's not just about increased air campaigns or sorties or combat sorties, it's with everything that we have. This is our fight. And if there was any shred of doubt that these people are evil, I think this horrific video was evidence enough.

CHARLIE D'AGATA: In that message this is our fight is one that we've continued to hear throughout the week, taking ownership and taking the fight to ISIS, tapping into that anger and calls for revenge. Jordan's Queen Rania led a procession after Friday prayers where thousands of people came into the streets to demonstrate and also to hold a mass prayer in memory of their pilot. But the situation has raised security concerns here. This battle is being waged over the border in Iraq and Syria. We put that to the foreign minister and he said we have to knock on their door before they knock on ours. Bob.

BOB SCHIEFFER: Okay. Charlie, thank you.

For the latest on Jordan's powerful response to the ISIS execution of its pilot, Jordan's minister of media affairs, Mohammed Al Momani also joins us now from Amman. Mister Minister, your country has conducted fifty-six airstrikes now in three days. Can you tell, yet, what impact they have had?

MOHAMMED AL MOMANI (Jordanian Media Minister): Our military officials, Bob, just held a press conference saying that they believe there has been significant damage done to ISIS targets. We believe that twenty percent of the known targets of ISIS has been destroyed over the last three days, on the airstrikes. We said right from the beginning that our respond will be swift and strong. And this is what they showed today in the press conference with pictures and-- and evidence.

BOB SCHIEFFER: Do you have any further information on the fate of the American aid worker, Kayla Mueller? Of course, ISIS said that she was killed in one of those airstrikes.

MOHAMMED AL MOMANI: They tend to lie about these things all the time. They negotiated a swap with our pilot that they have killed weeks ago. So what we know about them is that they are liars. They don't have any respect for human lives. That's why it's very difficult to actually make any accurate assessment or conclusion regarding the fate of the American lady.

BOB SCHIEFFER: Your forces reacted strongly from the air. Do you think there's any possibility or are you considering actually sending ground troops against ISIS?

MOHAMMED AL-MOMANI: At this point, coalition members are not speaking about boots on the ground. Having said that this is a war. And His Majesty at some point describe it as a third world war. So if circumstances change, then we will discuss it at that point. But, at this point of time, I think no one is-- is talking about boots on the ground. The talk is about helping the Iraqi military, the Kurdish armed forces, and the Syrian forces, opposition moderate forces to help fight terrorism.

BOB SCHIEFFER: Mister Minister, describe for me how you think the death of your pilot, what impact did that have on the Jordanian people?

MOHAMMED AL-MOMANI: I think it was a very significant impact. The death of our pilot actually created a wave of anger, not only in Jordan but also in the Arab world and in the Muslim world and the international community as well. And I think people are convinced more than ever that we should be looking seriously into this phenomena of terrorism and this terrorist organization, and we should do whatever it takes in order to fight terrorism and extremism.

BOB SCHIEFFER: Mister Minister, thank you so much.

MOHAMMED AL-MOMANI: Thank you, Bob.

BOB SCHIEFFER: CBS News correspondent Holly Williams has been covering this story since ISIS first started its march of terror through Iraq and Syria. She filed this report from Dohuk in northern Iraq.

HOLLY WILLIAMS (CBS News Foreign Correspondent): This is my fifth visit to Iraq since ISIS swept across the country last year. And I came here wanting to find out whether the extremists are any closer to defeat. The Iraqi National Army is still in disarray, as it has been since many of its soldiers downed their weapons and ran away from ISIS in June. So as Iraq tries to beat back ISIS, it's relying on Shiite Muslim militias; like the Badr Brigades. We encountered them in Diyala province where they just won a decisive victory over ISIS. The problem is that the Badr Brigades are implicated in the torture and murder of thousands of Sunni Muslims. And just a few days before our visit, they were accused of killing more than seventy unarmed Sunni men in that same area. So that effectively means that one of America's best allies in the fight against ISIS here in Iraq is a notoriously violent militia group.

This week we also crossed into Syria where they have a very different set of problems. Unlike in Iraq ISIS has actually gained ground there during the airstrikes. And we traveled to a pocket of territory where Kurdish volunteers are holding out against the extremists. One of those young fighters is Denis Sipan, a twenty-two-year-old elementary schoolteacher, who quit her job to become a sniper.

DENIS SIPAN: We want freedom and we don't want to be afraid raising our kids in future and having a normal life, you know. If we didn't do it, I mean, the whole place will be full of ISIS.

HOLLY WILLIAMS: The Kurdish fighters told us they've not seen a single airstrike and they desperately want some. But so far the vast majority of strikes in Syria have targeted just one key city Kobani. They sang battle songs to pass the time but the mood was extremely tense. If ISIS launches a full-scale offensive on their positions, they have only light arms and they'd be quickly overrun. They urgently want international help, but in Syria, they're unlikely to get it because the U.S. is reluctant to get more deeply involved in the country's complex civil war, in particular, if it could end up helping the Syrian regime.

BOB SCHIEFFER: The intrepid Holly Williams reporting from northern Iraq. We turn now to the chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee Republican Michael McCaul. He joins us from Austin. Mister Chairman, after seeing these reports, after hearing from a spokesman for the Jordanian government this morning, do you believe this administration, the Obama administration, is taking this threat seriously enough?

REPRESENTATIVE MICHAEL MCCAUL (Homeland Security Committee Chairman/R-Texas): Not enough and they never have. They (INDISTINCT) define the enemy for what it is and that's radical Islamist extremism. I believe the airstrikes have been limited-- had limited success; it's a policy of containment, not a policy to degrade and destroy the enemy. I think if anything the-- the-- lighting on fire this Jordanian pilot will now galvanize I hope the Arab nations to fight ISIS, including on the ground we heard in-- in your segment piece earlier that they say it's our fight it's also the United States fight because we don't want them to attack us here on the homeland. So I think that under U.S. leadership if we could galvanize these Arab nations, Sunni Arabs against Sunni extremists, ISIS in-- in Syria that would be the ideal. I-- I think that there's no ground force in Syria. And, as you heard in your reporting, the airstrikes are not sufficient to date to take care and take out ISIS right now.

BOB SCHIEFFER: Well, let me just ask you this, Mister Chairman, as horrible as it is, as horrific as these scenes are that we are seeing, do these people pose a threat to the American homeland?

REPRESENTATIVE MICHAEL MCCAUL: Well, I believe they do, and the reason why we have fifty thousand ISIS strong and growing. I believe this propaganda film, which is almost like a Hollywood horror movie will enflame more recruits to come in and will also galvanize I hope the Arab nations. But let's face it, they're-- they're about fifteen to twenty thousand, it's gone up to twenty thousand foreign fighters, five thousand with Western passports. We've had hundreds of Americans that have traveled to fight in the region, and some of those have returned. So we're talking about barbarians at the gate. We need to keep them out of the gate. And we need to monitor those who've gotten through the gate. This is a serious homeland security issue as well. We don't want to see what happened in Paris happen here in the United States.

BOB SCHIEFFER: General John Allen, who is the head of the U.S. military effort against ISIS, told ABC this morning that ISIS is at an-- and these are his words, an entirely different level than al Qaeda. They're better organized, he said, they have better command. Do you agree with his assessment?

REPRESENTATIVE MICHAEL MCCAUL: Absolutely. I mean al Qaeda denounced them because they're so brutal in their tactics. But they a governing, functioning caliphate, now. They own territory, they own-- they have a lot of money. And-- and so they are far more dangerous I think than-- than al Qaeda has ever been. They're a lot more better organized. And if you look at their social media propaganda like the film of the Jordanian pilot, it's so sophisticated. And they send that out over the world to sort of inflame the-- the potential radicalized Islam world, that-- that, you know, we-- we're worried about not only the foreign fighters, but also the homegrown violent extremists they can look over the internet and get radicalized over the internet here in the United States.

BOB SCHIEFFER: Mister Chairman, thank you so much for joining us now.

REPRESENTATIVE MICHAEL MCCAUL: Thanks, Bob.

BOB SCHIEFFER: Really appreciate it.

We want to turn now for more on what the U.S. can do to defeat ISIS and we're going to talk about that with Mike Morell, who is the former deputy director of the CIA. Of course, he is now the senior security contributor for CBS News, and Tom Donilon, former national security advisor for President Obama. Let me just ask both of you the same question. And, Tom, I'll just start with you. Is the administration taking this seriously enough?

THOMAS DONILON (Former White House National Security Advisor): I think so, because it's a serious threat. As the congressman said, I think we are in an entirely new and complicated phase in the effort against terrorism. Multiple vectors, ISIS, as you were discussing with the congressman, is a large organization. It controls a large swath of territory. There may be twenty thousand foreign fighters there. There may be several thousand who hold Western passports and that presents an ongoing threat to the United States. ISIS presents a threat to our important allies and partners in the region, in Iraq and in Jordan and Lebanon and elsewhere.

BOB SCHIEFFER: Well, I ask--

THOMAS DONILON: So it is a very serious threat.

BOB SCHIEFFER: I ask you this question because in the midst of all of this on Friday, the President's national security advisor, Susan Rice, said this:

SUSAN RICE (Friday): Too often what's missing here in Washington is a sense of perspective. Yes, there is a lot going on. Still, while the dangers we face may be more numerous and varied, they are not of the existential nature we confronted during World War II or during the Cold War. We cannot afford to be buffeted by alarmism and a nearly instantaneous news cycle.

BOB SCHIEFFER: So-- so, Tom, explain that to me.

THOMAS DONILON: Well, a couple of things. Number one, it is important to have perspective and it is important for decision makers, while you're dealing with the crisis of the moment to keep your eye on the long haul and the strategic challenges and opportunities that the country has. That said, as we sit here today, as I said, we have a serious new set of developments in the terror area. By the way it's not just ISIS, it's ISIS in Iraq and-- and Michael can comment on this more-- with more definite than I can, it's ISIS in Iraq and Syria, but it's in Yemen with AQAP, the group that inspired the attacks in Paris, and we have a collapsing situation in Yemen. We have other al Qaeda groups in Syria and in North Africa, and we have this social media dynamic that is radicalizing-- radicalizing individuals around the world and-- and individuals in small groups. And we have a first-class crisis in Europe right now.

BOB SCHIEFFER: Yeah.

MICHAEL MORELL (CBS News Senior Security Contributor): So perspective is really important here. And does ISIS pose a threat to the United States? Absolutely. Does it pose a threat to the order in the Middle East and the borders and-- and the whole system in the Middle East, absolutely. But is it the biggest threat to the homeland right now? No. AQAP in Yemen is a bigger threat, al Qaeda in Pakistan is a bigger threat, and the Khorasan group, which is a part of the al Nusra group in Syria, which is separate from ISIS, is a bigger threat right now. So perspective is really important here, Bob.

BOB SCHIEFFER: But, I mean when you put all that together, no, I don't think so this has anything close to the-- the evil that the Nazis represented, and, obviously, this is not the Cold War with the Soviet Union. But it seems to me, this is something that-- I'm still not sure this administration is galvanized to fight this fight and do what's-- what's necessary to do it.

MICHAEL MORELL: So, Bob, let me just give you a sense of sort of where we are after six months in this fight, right? It's been six months now of airstrikes, we're-- we're getting a large number of executions now, the most recent was absolutely the most brutal. So where are we, right? We have had a big victory in this fight so far which is we have stopped the ISIS blitzkrieg across Iraq. We stopped it in its tracks, right? They have't gained no more territory since we started these airstrikes. If we had not done this they would be in Baghdad today, right? So that's-- that's our significant victory here. And we are going to have to push them back, that's going to take some time, it's going to take training of-- of-- of Iraqi troops, is going to be figuring out a strategy in Syria, but they have also had a victory, Bob, and their big victory has been the spread of their message that's been faster than anything we've ever seen from al Qaeda. So now you have terrorist groups in Algeria, in Libya, and in Egypt, and, increasingly, in Afghanistan who are taking on the ISIS brand. We had one of those groups just ten days ago attack a hotel in Tripoli and kill an American and we also have this self-radicalization that Tom talked about in Western Europe, in Australia, in Canada, that's all ISIS related. So that's been their big victory here. But that's kind of where we are today.

THOMAS DONILON: Yeah. Well, and I-- I do think that the-- the U.S. and coalition responses have been substantial. I checked in with the coalition authority on Friday afternoon with respect to the numbers, there's been two thousand three hundred airstrikes. Half of them by the way in Syria, half of them in Iraq, about six thousand ISIS fighters killed, half their leadership taken off the battlefield, but this is just the beginning, Bob. This is a long-term effort that go-- will go well beyond President Obama's administration, frankly. We've done this stopping the momentum that Michael mentioned, we begun to push back, but taking back territory requires an effective on-the-ground effort. We don't have that, yet. We're building that and that's, frankly, months away. I think it can be done, by the away through training the Iraqi security forces and providing them with the support that they need. And shrinking ISIS, and, by the way, pushing back on their narrative of success, which is absolutely-- absolutely critical here. Another key thing we're going to have to do, though, in addition to the ground effort in Iraq is getting the politics right. Your reporter Holly Williams, excellent piece here, underscored a real challenge, which is getting political reconciliation and power sharing in Iraq going forward. Otherwise we'll have a big problem.

BOB SCHIEFFER: All right. We're going to take a break and come back and talk some more about this. We'll be back.

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BOB SCHIEFFER: Back now with Mike Morell and Thomas Donilon and-- and you're both talking about the threat here. And both of you agree that there's going to be have to be some kind of force on the ground. But-- but who is it going to be?

THOMAS DONILON: Well, in-- in Iraq it will need to be (INDISTINCT) to the Iraqi security forces. And-- and again as your correspondent pointed out, there is a lot of push back against ISIS by the Shia militias, which are a complicated organization and can be quite sectarian and violent and that's a real challenge going forward. So-- but at the core it is building up the Iraqi security forces to take-- to retake territory.

MICHAEL MORELL: And, on the serious side, I don't think we've quite figured that out, yet. Training five thousand moderate opposition a year, which we haven't even started to do yet, is not a large enough number in my view. The number is going to have to be larger in Syria, we have to get Syria right because if we don't get Syria right, then ISIS will simply come across that border as we have success in Iraq and we wouldn't really have gained anything.

BOB SCHIEFFER: Let me just shift quickly to the German leader Angela Merkel is coming here this week. Obviously, there's a big split now between Germany and the United States. We have people in the administration talking about, not committing to, but talking about maybe it's time to arm the Ukrainians over there.

MICHAEL MORELL: Yeah.

BOB SCHIEFFER: She says, flatly, we shouldn't do that. Is there a divide between Germany and the United States on this, Tom?

THOMAS DONILON: Well, the President and-- and Chancellor Merkel will talk about this tomorrow. There are a couple of things on it though. One is that President Putin and the Russians continue to press unimpeded way their goals in Ukraine. The Russians are responsible for the violence, we have a-- we have a war underway in Eastern Ukraine. Five thousand people have been killed since the outset of this thing. Putin has led Russia in a direction that's, essentially, adversarial now to the United States and the West, that's a big change. And, third, we need to put more pressure on this situation and that's what they will talk about. Sanctions have put a lot of pressure on Russia. Oil prices have put a lot of pressure on Russia. The next decision here, though, is the decision around defensive arms for-- for Ukraine. That will be discussed tomorrow. Merkel came out strongly against that at the Munich Security Conference over the weekend. I would be much more in favor, frankly, of moving forward with-- with arming. And I think the sequencing here may be important. And one of the-- one of the reasons I think that you had this latest effort to go to Moscow and try to get a political solution is because of the prospect of arming the Ukrainians. So my view would be engage in the politics, engage in the diplomacy, but hold back here as a step-- the next step that we would take increasing the cost through the provision of arms.

MICHAEL MORELL: Bob, the other thing I would do is I would talk about who the real loser is here in this whole Ukraine story. And the real loser is Russia. It's the Russian economy it's the Russian middle class because of what Putin has done here. Any hope of integrating Russia with the West is gone. So Russia is the big loser. We should talk to the Russians and we should talk to the Russian people publicly about that.

BOB SCHIEFFER: Do you think we're anywhere close to at least getting a cease-fire there, Tom?

THOMAS DONILON: It's not clear at this point, right? To date, Putin, since the September Minsk agreement, has violated all the provisions, hasn't really tried to implement or, in fact, anyway effectively implement any of the provisions. There is pressure on Russia. But to date, as we sit here today, there is no sign that Russia has in any way stopped or reduced its support for the separatists, just the-- just the opposite. Now again, maybe this latest round of politics and maybe the threat of having us bring-- arming the Ukrainians may-- may change the dynamic. We'll see tomorrow. It's a very important meeting tomorrow between Merkel and Obama.

BOB SCHIEFFER: All right. Well, I want to thank both of you--

MICHAEL MORELL: Welcome.

BOB SCHIEFFER: --bringing some perspective to this.

THOMAS DONILON: Thank you.

BOB SCHIEFFER: And I'll be back with some personal thoughts.

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BOB SCHIEFFER: Some thoughts now on the other big story of the week, measles. After a 1998 report in a prestigious British medical journal linking autism to vaccinations, who could blame a parent for questioning whether to have a child vaccinated? Not me. But here is the hook. Scientists questioned the conclusions from the start. The study was debunked in 2004. And in 2010 redacted and called utterly false by the journal's editor. The doctor who wrote the study was barred from practicing medicine and it was learned he had taken six hundred seventy thousand dollars from a lawyer who hoped to sue vaccine makers. But, as Mark Twain once remarked, a lie can travel around the world while the truth is putting its boots on. Underline that in the age of the internet, as vaccination rates dropped in some places and measles came back. With an election coming, no surprise that the right not to vaccinate became an issue. One wag said, "Some of these candidates were afraid of losing the anti-science vote." But there is more than a science lesson here. It's a reminder that the internet is the first medium to deliver news on a worldwide scale that has no editor. The worst newspaper has someone who knows where the stuff comes from, but not the internet. Information, true, false and in between just appears from who knows where and once out it's as hard to kill as crabgrass. And sometimes, more dangerous.

We'll have more on this story from Doctor Anthony Fauci of the National Institutes of Health and our own Doctor Jon LaPook coming up next on FACE THE NATION.

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BOB SCHIEFFER: Some of our stations are leaving us now. But for most of you, we'll be right back with a lot more FACE THE NATION. That update on the measles and our panel. Stay with us.

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BOB SCHIEFFER: And welcome back to FACE THE NATION. And now on to the other big story we're covering this week, the rising number of measles cases in the United States. According to state and local health agencies, there are now more than a hundred and fifty cases reported in sixteen states in this latest outbreak. Doctor Anthony Fauci is head of the infectious diseases at the National Institutes of Health. Our own CBS News chief medical correspondent, of course, is Doctor Jon LaPook and he is in New York. Doctor Fauci, are we on the verge of a major epidemic here?

DR. ANTHONY FAUCI (NIAID Director): Not a major epidemic in the sense of globally over the United States because more than ninety percent of the people in the United States are vaccinated. What we're talking about are outbreaks among vulnerable people. And I think what people don't fully appreciate is that children, even normal children without any issues of health from birth to one-year-old, are not vaccinated because you don't vaccinate children until they're twelve months old. So when you have outbreaks children, for example, in daycare centers, like we saw in Chicago, become vulnerable if there is enough infection in the country to allow for these outbreaks that we saw in California and in Disneyland. That's the threat.

BOB SCHIEFFER: So-- yeah. Where-- it was California, the original group in Disneyland. We have this outbreak in Chicago, any other pockets?

DR. ANTHONY FAUCI: Yeah. There are-- as you said, several states, there was in South Dakota, for example, there've been a cluster. And-- and the vulnerability is always since this is such a highly contagious infection that someone can get exposed in a place where there's an outbreak and then travel in any part of the country and then get involved in getting sick not knowing it and infecting other vulnerable people. Not only infants and children less than one but people who can't get vaccinated, like children with leukemia, and people who have immuno-suppressed states that they can't get vaccinated which makes them much more susceptible.

BOB SCHIEFFER: Doctor LaPook, what do you say to patients when they come to you and say should my child get a vaccination? I've heard all this stuff. I read this stuff that's on the internet. We all know that this study that really sort of started all this turns out to be totally fraudulent. But what do you say to parents?

DR. JON LAPOOK (CBS News Chief Medical Correspondent): Well of course, I advise that they get vaccination. But if there's some pushback, the very first thing I do is try to be sort of gentle, not make them defensive. And I-- I say to them, look, I understand that if you have a fear it's because you're trying to protect your kids. And that's your job as a parent to keep your kids safe. But I point out logically that this all started with an article in 1998 that turned out to be completely inaccurate and was retracted twelve years later by the Lancet. The problem, as you point out, was the mischief was already done. So for twelve years this was out there in the ether, the sense that vaccination was somehow unsafe. So I can try to be as logical as I can and point out why the benefits of vaccination far outweigh the risks. But still when something is out there in the ether there's this sort of almost Pavlovian condition responses, they hear the world vaccination they think, oh, dangerous.

BOB SCHIEFFER: Were you surprised that somehow it popped up as kind of an issue here, an early issue. My guess is it's going to kind of go away as a political issue with some of the blowback to some of the politicians that raised this. But I was a little surprised at that.

DR. JON LAPOOK: Well, you know I'm never surprised when any of these issues become politicized. We saw that with Ebola, for sure. And you know you look at states like Mississippi and West Virginia where they have mandatory, there's no exemptions except for medical exemptions for vaccination. They haven't had a case of measles in Mississippi since 1992. So you understand why on the one hand some people want to have the sense of personal control and freedom, but, on the other hand, we have the-- the issue of protecting society. I mean there are things like drunk driving, for example. We don't allow people to go out there and just say, look, I want to go out there and get loaded, get drunk, and-- and drive my car. We don't allow that.

BOB SCHIEFFER: Mm-Hm. Doctor Fauci, how can the government do a better job on educating people on that?

DR. ANTHONY FAUCI: Well, by-- by getting the message out as much as we possibly can. For example, our Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the CDC, has put out health alert networks. And they're constantly trying to get the message across. They're doing a very good job. But, you know, sometimes, as much as you talk, you don't turn people around, but you shouldn't give up. But also it isn't just people who have deep philosophical problems with vaccination. There are some people who for reasons that are not as deeply philosophical as that, that you can get to and turn them around. And that's what I think the CDC is doing and doing a very good job. But they also work very closely with the local and state health authorities. So it's that synergy and that collaboration between the federal government in the form of the CDC and the FDA and the NIH and the local and state health authorities, hopefully, it will get the message.

BOB SCHIEFFER: Should children who have not been vaccinated be allowed to go to public schools?

DR. ANTHONY FAUCI: Well, again, that's not for us to decide. That is a local and state thing. What we can do is just what Jon said, is that get the information about. You have a very good vaccine. You have a highly contagious disease. And you have the disease that's entirely preventable. When you look at that data with a safe vaccine the conclusion is really almost obvious.

BOB SCHIEFFER: Doctor Fauci, Doctor LaPook, thank you both.

And we'll be back with our panel to do some analysis on all of this in a minute.

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BOB SCHIEFFER: And we're back now with some of Washington's best. Ruth Marcus, columnist for the Washington Post. David Sanger, national security correspondent for the New York Times. Nancy Youssef with the Daily Beast. And John Harris, the cofounder and editor-in-chief of Politico. And, Nancy, I want to start with you. You were out in the Middle East for so long, working for McClatchy. You've been to all of these places. I want to ask you about this idea that ISIS recruiting jihadis at nearly the same rate that we are killing them. Is-- do you-- do you believe that's right and-- and where does that go? How do we counter that?

NANCY YOUSSEF (Daily Beast): Well, the U.S. military said that they've killed six thousand roughly, since the air campaign began in August. And in that time, independent groups have said four thousand have come in even since October. Remember the campaign began in August. And so it seems that they're able to keep up at the rate that they are being killed. Now, the interesting thing is that military doesn't have a means to really accurately count those numbers, because they don't have troops on the ground. And (INDISTINCT) groups are giving these numbers. But the results are the same, which is that they're able to recruit. And one of the reasons is, as we see these barbaric videos, to us it is so obvious that this group should not have any appeal. But for so many in the region, this idea of forming an Islamic caliphate, the-- the oppression and the suffering that they endure at home has made it such that-- that the ISIS message somehow resonates with them that there should be a caliphate. That they-- that an Islamic state would they take care of their poverty, would take care of their interpretation of religion that there's such frustration with the state that from which they live under, that the Islamic State is an alternative. In Iraq, for example, the appeal is in part because they reject their-- their Shia-dominated government.

BOB SCHIEFFER: David, you've been dealing this-- with this for a long time. Do you think the killing of this Jordanian pilot could somehow backfire here? Obviously, it has inflamed the people of Jordan. I mean I think we're seeing a wholly different story in the streets so to speak at least in Jordan right now.

DAVID SANGER (New York Times): You have seen a big pendulum swing in Jordan and you actually have seen the government in Jordan try to-- to sort of fan those flames with these very big protests that they had in-- in memorial. The problem is Jordan is a tiny state that doesn't have a whole lot of resources to go contribute to this fight. And you've seen great reluctance on the part of other Arab states to really stick with it and the United Arab Emirates just recently came back in starting up flights again after they had suspended them after the-- the shoot down. I think many of them are waiting for a greater sign from Washington about how much backup they're going to get. And that's why that clip that you showed before of Susan Rice, the National Security advisor, was so interesting, because this sort of one world view of the critique of President Obama is that he's not paying attention as the lines are being redrawn in Ukraine, as ISIS gets more powerful that there's a-- a collapse of old world order here. And then you have the view that you heard from Miss Rice, you know, the other day where she basically said, these are discrete problems that we can handle. We're the unchallenged superpower. The problem is they haven't sent clear signals about how much commitment the U.S. is willing to make.

BOB SCHIEFFER: Well, John, and you-- you're the master of politics and you covered it probably as much as anybody. This whole idea of-- there is kind of a notion and you heard Mike McCaul talk about it. He said the administration is just not taking this seriously enough.

JOHN HARRIS (Politico): There's a perception that the world is on fire, and there's enough fires going on to-- to make that a legitimate perception to go to what David said is the-- the administration is trying to not be buffeted by these-- these series of individual crises and-- and basically claiming that they're not linked. The-- the administration came out with its national security strategy the other day, I remember about a year ago there was this big storm, and President Obama was criticized, even by Hillary Clinton, for saying his strategies, don't do stupid stuff, or maybe even a different word than stuff was how he said it privately. This was actually the articulation of that, he calls for strategic patience, and it's basically, look, we can't be everywhere. We've got to just to have a detachment on this. The problem with that is not just our enemies but our allies, to see detachment as indifference, and-- and lack of willpower. And Obama, he-- he clearly gets drawn in, every instance of late that to the conclusion that force is what matters not just diplomacy and engagement. Hillary Clinton, by the way, is going to have a big problem reconciling this, because she's much more on the force and intervention side.

RUTH MARCUS (Washington Post): I think John is exactly right. The President's instincts are too-- are patience whether it may be strategic or not, sometimes too much patience can be a very dangerous thing. And so I was very struck by the panel you had on, two people who worked with this President very closely, Mike Morell and Tom Donilon who, yes, there are not existential threats to the United States as we had during the Cold War but the serious outbreak of problems not just the Islamic State but the others that they rattled off and the potential dangers not just to the region and the Mid-East but to the homeland that that could pose, and the state of play in the Mid-East. We-- yes, we have started, maybe we have some progress in Iraq, I was very struck by the degree to which Tom Donilon did not mention any progress in Syria, because that's really pretty late to the game. So I'm not sure patience is warranted right now.

BOB SCHIEFFER: Nancy, after all those years you spent out in the region, how is President Obama and American leadership viewed in that part of the world?

NANCY YOUSSEF: Well, anything that carries the patina of the Iraq-- the-- any view has the patina of the Iraq war and how the war started and also how it ended. On top of that you have now Arab Spring where there was a feeling. I can say, for example, in Egypt that the President spoke out on behalf of the protesters a little late when it was inevitable that former President Hosni Mubarak would fall. And then when they said that the elected President Morsi must stay that the U.S. is endorsing the Muslim Brotherhood rather than the process of a democratic election, and so the feeling is that the United States is sort of taking a limited view, one that looks strictly at their interests and isn't really engaged enough to take on these very intractable problems. Now that all said I think one of the differences that came out of Arab Spring was that these-- we're seeing much more as local issues rather than constructs of the United States, whereas before, the leadership of Mubarak, for example, was seen as propped up by the United States, is now Sisi, the current president is seen as an organic product of-- of the circumstances on the ground. So it's been a shift.

BOB SCHIEFFER: What would you add to that, David?

DAVID SANGER: Well, I thought the best part of the national security strategy that John referred to before was that in its first couple of pages it prioritized when the United States would have to go get involved. And it started with the natural ones that when there's a threat directly to the United States, homeland, threats to Americans, and so forth. Where I think it ran into trouble is not acknowledging how quickly we've gotten into a situation where what seemed to be regional threats can turn into threats to us. So, just as Afghanistan became the breeding ground for al Qaeda, the big fear about Syria now is that if it splits up, it becomes sort of the next Afghanistan. And then we ask the question, were we in enough and early enough? And that's why you see this big debate about whether or not we are actually secretly trying to keep Assad in for fear that the country will implode. You're seeing it again in Ukraine, where the-- the issue is to what degree do we arm the rebels and there-- there is a big split out here. Not only between the Europeans and the U.S., but even in the administration, you heard Ash Carter, the nominee for Secretary of Defense, say he was inclined to arm.

BOB SCHIEFFER: Well, I-- I want to talk about Ukraine in just a minute. But-- but I want to get back to this, what are we trying to do in Syria? I'm not sure I understand what we're trying to do there.

NANCY YOUSSEF: Well, the official position is that the airstrikes, frankly, what the U.S. is doing is serving as a sort of air force, if you will, for the Kurdish forces and the territories that they're trying to protect and Iraqi army and the territories that they are trying to protect because they simply don't have the air power to do it and it's an area where you can dominate over the Islamic State. Now the U.S. position is that it cannot send ground forces and it has to be a local force that does it and it will be months and months of training before they can reach that point. So many argue that it's a strategy of containment and-- and, frankly, it's hard to see how far the U.S. could go in such a way to really change the dynamics on the ground because they're so fluid, and-- and the groups that we would have aligned with a few years ago are now aligned with al Qaeda, so picking allies in that region has become very, very complicated. I think there's a fair argument to be made that it's a containment strategy. I just want to go back to one point that David made. You know one of the case studies in terms of the strategy that's written and what's carried out is Libya where the U.S. said it wouldn't get involved unless it was a direct fight, got involved and we saw the repercussions of that is now arguably a threat, not only to the region, but to the United States as so many ISIS fighters--

DAVID SANGER: It's one where the President said he's had some regrets.

RUTH MARCUS: Right and you know, Nancy makes an interesting point about-- there's a lot of what have, could have, should have on Syria and elsewhere about what might have happened in the potential, much more flexibility to make progress that we could have had if we had intervened earlier and that actually brings me to John's point about Hillary Clinton and you posted a little bit, John, as a potential problem for Secretary Clinton in terms of separating herself from President Obama's policies, I actually think it would could be a benefit to her because unlike when she ran eight years ago, she is not facing challenges from the left of the party with people worrying that she's a little bit too interventionist, but it really sets her apart in a way that I think could set her up very nicely for a general election campaign differentiating herself from President Obama and there's an interesting parallel debate on the Republican side, but, you know, but the strains between the more isolationist Rand Paul parts of the party and the more interventionist parts. So I think this is going to be a really interesting and vibrant part of the presidential debate coming as well.

JOHN HARRIS: And-- and unlike sometimes where these are-- are kind of manufactured debates or matters of manipulation did not get on the wrong side of this. I think this flows very genuinely from what Hillary Clinton actually believe. Her instincts are much more interventionist, much more of a believer of diplomacy backed by force than President Obama.

RUTH MARCUS: And the one thing we know is this is for sure going to be the next President's problem, no matter who he or she is.

BOB SCHIEFFER: You know one thing that kind of struck me this week when the President-- we all knew he was going to do this, he said last year he was going to do it. He was going to ask the new Congress to give him formal authority to-- to fight this war against ISIS and al Qaeda. And, you know, we-- we have been hearing the Republicans say, you know, he's got to be stronger, he's got to go after them and then the response from John Boehner was, well, this is going to be a heavy lift. I mean what is going on here? Is the Congress-- are they going to deny him the right to carry out this fight?

DAVID SANGER: It's a mother may I sort of step out here. So nobody wants to be the first one to initiate the authorization of force because they have had a few cases where authorizations to use force have blown up on them in the past, including in Iraq. So the Republicans are playing a game here I think in which they want to say the President's been too weak but they don't necessarily want to go on record with a vote that indicates that they're giving this President or this President's successor this kind of blank check that George Bush had at some point because they know in a lot of constituencies there's a sense that the United States just got out of two wars and we don't want to get back in.

JOHN HARRIS: Bob, both parties, I would say, have a division between elite ranks, what thinkers, national security strategists, high officials tend to think if they're on truth serum what should we really think versus where the country in-- at both ends of the ideological spectrum is weary of war, skeptical of our ability to make-- really make a difference even if we wanted to. President Obama is probably closer to the mood of the country than the people who are saying, look, we got to do something, the world is on fire, we need a more aggressive response.

RUTH MARCUS: And-- and-- and everybody pretty much thinks that we need to update the authorization, what the precise contours of that are, much less agreement. But especially as we wind down the war in Afghanistan, one important thing to start thinking about is, what will be our authority legally to hold people who were caught on the battlefield in Afghanistan, at Guantanamo if-- or elsewhere? If that war has ended, what-- what are the-- what is the law of war justification? It sounds like a really long key point but it could be very important.

BOB SCHIEFFER: I want to go back to what David brought up about Ukraine, the German leader Angela Merkel coming here. I think she's coming tomorrow. She's already said no. We shouldn't be arming the Ukrainian folks. The United States actively considering that. Is this a breach between Germany and the United States? And if so, is that something to be concerned about?

DAVID SANGER: Well, there's one that is certainly developing. It's not just Germany, it's both the Chancellor-- the German Chancellor and the French President both went to see President Putin at the end of last week. They presented a program that we don't fully understand but is, essentially, an extension of the cease-fire with a little bit more of a carved out region for the Russian-oriented areas of-- of the country. But the problem is that they've said that even if Putin doesn't accept that they are not going to favor arming the Ukrainian government. So Putin is looking at this and saying, well, what's the downside of just dragging for time here which is what he's done very successfully as this has gotten into a bigger and bigger conflict. The President's instinct is not necessarily to go in, I think, and many in his-- his party agree. But, as I mentioned, you've heard Ash Carter, I think you'll probably have to hear from Hillary Clinton on this issue pretty soon at some point. And it's going to be a very big division because, in the end, you heard Vice President Biden say yesterday that the reset was over and we're into a period of resistance to the Russians. That's different than saying confrontation.

NANCY YOUSSEF: It-- it seems to me the central question is if the U.S. were to give the Ukrainian army more weapons, would that prolong this conflict or would it push the Russians to-- to back away, making it may be too costly for them, either politically or economically? If the answer is no, and the Russians continue to get involved, what is the second and third-order effects? Must the U.S. then get more involved, is it ready to get more involved on something that-- that the President has, essentially, called a regional issue?

BOB SCHIEFFER: All right. Well, we're going to stop there. I want to thank all of you for being with us. We'll be back with a look at the whacky weather of the weekend in a minute.

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BOB SCHIEFFER: Finally, today, is it just me or is it cabin fever, whatever, add on to all the other stuff that's gone haywire? I cannot remember when the weather has been so well different from one place to another. First off, whoever heard of something called the Pineapple Express? Well, the people on the West Coast and Nevada know more about it than they care to. It is the name the weather bureau gave to the recent atmospheric river of rain, almost ten inches of it that brought floods, cancelled airline flights, and knocked out power for thousands. And there's more on the way. In the Northeast, it wasn't rain but snow, enough to delay the Super Bowl Parade in Boston, nearly three feet of the white stuff. It was the snowiest seven-day period in the city's history and there could be two feet more coming because Winter Storm Marcus intends to hang around a while. It serves us right for trusting a storm named Marcus, sounds gentle, anything but. But you wouldn't know about that if you were in the middle of America. Record-breaking warm weather every place you look. It hit seventy degrees in Provo, Utah, even hotter in Denver, Friday, seventy-one. And if you're heading to New Orleans for Mardi Gras Parades, they're calling for a chance of sunburn in February. Go figure.

Back in a minute.

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BOB SCHIEFFER: Well, that's all the time we have for today. Thank you for watching FACE THE NATION. And we'll see you right here next Sunday.

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