Obama loses his cool as he is challenged again and again on 'embarrassment' of Syria

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What was supposed to be friendly territory grew heated in a CBS interview with President Obama that aired Sunday night, showing a contentious debate between Obama and a network correspondent.

In a wide-ranging, 24-minute interview that covered domestic and foreign policy, it was the Middle East that produced the most fireworks between Obama and '60 Minutes' reporter Steve Kroft.

Kroft repeatedly challenged Obama's strategies in Syria and against the Islamic State in the region, accusing the president of 'embarrassing' failures and a lack of leadership. Obama defended the U.S. mission in countries like Syria and Iraq and said better results will take more time.

The two men repeatedly interrupted and spoke over each other, although neither actually raised their voice.

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President Obama emphasized in Sunday's '60 Minutes' interview that the U.S. effort against the Islamic State is a long-term mission that cannot be judged too quickly

Kroft asked a string of long questions, with lengthy prologues, but grew exasperated when Obama was just as long-winded in his answers, at one point exclaiming, 'I feel like I've been filibustered, Mr. President.'

Obama shot back that Kroft had asked windy questions and offered to 'roll back the tape' to prove it.

From CBS's official transcript: 

Steve Kroft: The last time we talked was this time last year, and the situation in Syria and Iraq had begun to worsen vis-à-vis ISIS. You had just unveiled a plan to provide air support for troops in Iraq, and also some air strikes in Syria, and the training and equipping of a moderate Syrian force. You said that this would degrade and eventually destroy ISIS.

President Barack Obama: Over time.

Steve Kroft: Over time. It's been a year, and--

President Barack Obama: I didn't say it was going to be done in a year.

Steve Kroft: No. But you said...

President Barack Obama: There's a question in here somewhere.

Kroft was pressing Obama on the administration's timetable and successes so far against the Islamic State, at one point describing a now-scuttled Pentagon plan to train and equip anti-Islamic State fighters as an 'embarrassment.'

The White House announced Friday that it is 'pausing' the train-and-arm plan after it was revealed last month to a Senate committee that instead of an initial goal of 5,000 fighters, the U.S. military now only has four or five still on the battlefield in Iraq and Syria.

Read more of the latest news on President Barack Obama and the war on ISIS

'60 Minutes' correspondent Steve Kroft repeated pressed Obama on his strategies to make peace in Syria and defeat the Islamic State

Obama denied any assertion that Russian leader Vladimir Putin had taken advantage of a leadership vacuum by entering the bloody civil war in Syria

A snippet of the '60 Minutes' interview was aired earlier Friday on 'CBS This Morning.'

Kroft: If you were skeptical of the program to find and identify, train and equip moderate Syrians, why did you go through the program?

Obama: Well, because part of what we have to do here, Steve, is to try different things. Because we also have partners on the ground that are invested and interested in seeing some sort of resolution to this problem. And--

Kroft: And they wanted you to do it.

Obama: Well, no. That's not what I said. I think it is important for us to make sure that we explore all the various options that are available.

Kroft: I know you don't want to talk about this.

Obama: No, I'm happy to talk about it.

Kroft: I want to talk about the-- this program, because it would seem to show, I mean, if you expect 5,000 and you get five, it shows that somebody someplace along the line did not-- made-- you know, some sort of a serious miscalculation.

Obama: You know, the-- the-- Steve, let me just say this.

Kroft: It's an embarrassment. 

At another point, Kroft suggested that Russian President Vladimir Putin was directly 'challenging your leadership' in Syria, by entering the civil war while the U.S. stays out of it.

Kroft: A year ago when we did this interview, there was some saber-rattling between the United States and Russia on the Ukrainian border. Now it's also going on in Syria. You said a year ago that the United States-- America leads. We're the indispensible nation. Mr. Putin seems to be challenging that leadership.

Obama: In what way? Let-- let's think about this-- let-- let--

Kroft: Well, he's moved troops into Syria, for one. He's got people on the ground. Two, the Russians are conducting military operations in the Middle East for the first time since World War II--

Obama: So that's--

Kroft: --bombing the people-- that we are supporting.

Obama: So that's leading, Steve? Let me ask you this question. When I came into office, Ukraine was governed by a corrupt ruler who was a stooge of Mr. Putin. Syria was Russia's only ally in the region. And today, rather than being able to count on their support and maintain the base they had in Syria, which they've had for a long time, Mr. Putin now is devoting his own troops, his own military, just to barely hold together by a thread his sole ally. And in Ukraine--

Kroft: He's challenging your leadership, Mr. President. He's challenging your leadership--

Obama: Well Steve, I got to tell you, if you think that running your economy into the ground and having to send troops in in order to prop up your only ally is leadership, then we've got a different definition of leadership. 

A visibly irritated Obama defended his administration's decisions in Syria and elsewhere in the Middle East, showing rare bursts of anger in the contentious CBS interview

The interview partly repeated arguments Obama made at a White House press conference a week and a half ago, in which he told reporters that in his visit earlier that week with Putin at the United Nations in New York, the Russian had said he doesn't distinguish between ISIS forces in Syria and those forces fighting to remove Assad from power.

At that time, Obama said Putin was only going into Syria 'not out of strength but out of weakness.'

'His client, Mr. Assad, was crumbling and it was insufficient to keep sending them arms and money, and he has to put in his own planes and his own pilots,' Obama said. 

'Iran and Assad make up Mr. Putin's coalition at the moment. The rest of the world makes up ours. And so I don't think people are fooled by the current strategy.'

That press conference came before Putin's cruise missile strikes in Syria - and before the administration pulled the plug on the plan to train and arm anti-Islamic State fighters.

Elsewhere in the interview, hot topics included Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton's use of a private, home-based email server when she was Obama's secretary of state from 2009 to 2013.

Obama said he was unaware of Clinton's email practice, but dismissed any suggestion that it created a national security risk or that dangerous national secrets were compromised. The fact that it remains such a hot topic on the campaign trail, he said, is because of politics.

On whether Vice President Joe Biden should enter the race, Obama demurred again and simply said that Biden should make the decision on his own.

Asked if he himself could win a third term in office, Obama said yes.