Interview with Norah O'Donnell of CBS "This Morning"

O'Donnell: You ran for president promising to end the war in Iraq.

The President: Right.

O'Donnell: You did.

The President: Yeah.

O'Donnell: It ended two and a half years ago.

The President: Right.

O'Donnell: And at the time, you said Iraq was sovereign, stable and self-reliant.

The President: Yeah.

O'Donnell: And now you're redeploying troops, some troops, to Iraq. Are you worried about your legacy in some ways, that there might be an establishment of a terrorist safe haven in the middle of the Middle East?

The President: Well, first of all, I think we did exactly what we should have done, which is to turn over to Iraq a country that had the capacity, the ability to govern itself if all the parties involved -- Shia, Sunni and Kurd -- were prepared to make compromises with each other.

And I think the American people understood that whatever the debate about originally going in, our troops made enormous sacrifices to give the Iraqi people that chance. Unfortunately, that trust between those parties has never fully cohered. And now we're seeing some of the consequences of that.

O'Donnell: I mean, ISIS is a group that is so extreme --

The President: Mmm hmm. [acknowledging]

O'Donnell: -- it has been disavowed by al-Qaida as being too violent.

The President: Right.

O'Donnell: How urgent of a threat to the American people is ISIS?

The President: I think it's fair to say that their extreme ideology poses a medium- and long-term threat. Right now the problem with ISIS is the fact that they are destabilizing a country that could spill over into some of our, you know, allies, like Jordan, and that they are engaged in wars in Syria where, in that vacuum that's been created, they could amass more arms, more resources.

O'Donnell: Would that vacuum exist had we backed the moderate rebel forces in Syria?

The President: Yes. I think this notion that somehow there was this ready-made moderate Syrian force that was able to defeat Assad is simply not true. The notion that they were in a position suddenly to overturn, you know, not only Assad, but also ruthless, highly trained jihadists if we just sent a few arms, is a fantasy.

[break]

O'Donnell: This is the first ever White House summit on working families. I know you said in your State of the Union, when women succeed, America succeeds. What's the single most important thing you think you can do to help working women?

The President: Well, the question is not just what I can do, but I think what we as a society need to do. And this is an issue that's near and dear to my heart. I was raised by a single mom. Probably the most important financial bedrock of our family was my grandmother. And both of them were strong, hard-working women, but they experienced the glass ceiling. They dealt with child-care crises.

I'm now married to a pretty strong woman in Michelle Obama. And before we got to this place, she was dealing sometimes with me campaigning or being away and her having to deal with two small children while also working. And now I've got two daughters. So I want to make sure that they're able to balance family life and the workplace much better than -- or at least their choices will be better than some of the choices that existed before.

So the idea of this working summit is to really lift up conversations that every family all across America has every day. The workplace will be more productive and people will do better if, in fact, they've got a little more flexibility than they currently have.

O'Donnell: I mean, you look at, even as your -- you know, your oldest daughter does an internship -- do you look and say, wow, much hasn't changed, and this is kind of a problem, and I don't want my daughter to have to go through this?

The President: It's important for us not to deny the progress that's been made. You know, women occupy positions of authority and are able to take advantage of career opportunities that, a generation ago, might have been blocked. What's also true is that, you know, all too often childrearing burdens fall on them. They've got to juggle more stuff. What's also true is that, across the board in the aggregate, women are making 77 cents for every dollar that a man's making. Discrimination's still taking place.

And so part of what we want to do is to lift up the possibilities of changes in federal policy. But we don't want to restrict it to just federal laws. We also want to show that companies on their own initiative will discover that it's good business sense for them to take advantage of or to offer workers more flexibility on the job.

O'Donnell: Why is it, then -- I mean, the majority of the American people back paid family leave -- that you can't get it through Congress?

The President: Well, you know, we're -- we're unique among developed countries in not offering it. We've got, unfortunately, a faction of one party that says no to everything. And maybe the summit can highlight that this is not a partisan issue. This is a middle- class issue. This is an American issue.