I have no patience with people who go around blowing up innocent people.

I have the authority to address the threat from Isil, but I believe we are strongest as a nation when the president and Congress work together. So I welcome congressional support for this effort in order to show the world that Americans are united in confronting this danger.

Each wave of immigrants that have come in have been able to assimilate, integrate and then rise up and become part of this great American Dream.

It is moments like these that force us to try harder, and dig deeper, and to discover gifts we never knew we had - to find the greatness that lies within each of us.

Now, I've lived long enough to know that race relations are better than they were 10 or 20 or 30 years ago no matter what some folks say. You can see it not just in statistics, you see it in the attitudes of young Americans across the political spectrum. But we're not where we need to be. And all of us have more work to do.

We may come from different places and have different stories, but we share common hopes, and one very American dream.

For more than 60 years, the United States has stood by our allies and partners in the Asia Pacific. That includes our defence partnership with Singapore, which stretches back more than two decades.