Ray Mossholder: Today in History with Ray

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Today in History with Ray – November 13

Roger Williams, founder of Rhode Island

During the first 140 years of colonialism, Baptists were considered heretics in most New England colonies. In fact, on November 13, 1644, all Baptist churches were outlawed in Massachusetts. Why? Baptist’s refused to baptize babies, and in the minds of the Puritans that meant damnation for all Baptist children. All Baptists were denied the right to assemble, build churches, or try to convince anyone else that they should be a Baptist. Fines, whippings, imprisonment, banishment, and even death were imposed upon all peoples who pronounced themselves Baptists.

Baptist preacher Roger Williams was driven from the colony of Massachusetts with his family and several other Baptists who considered him their pastor. This band of believers endured 14 weeks of wicked winter weather to flee the wrath of those would come to America in order to freely practice their faith. Williams went to an entirely new area of the new land and founded Rhode Island. He actually gave everyone there the freedom to be whatever denomination they chose or the freedom not to choose. Roger Williams said the state has no power or right to interfere as to what denomination a Christian chooses.

Continental Army Brigadier General Richard Montgomery

On this day in 1775, Continental Army Brigadier General Richard Montgomery took Montreal, Canada, without opposition.

Montgomery’s victory owed its success in part to Ethan Allen’s disorganized defeat at the hand of British General and Canadian Royal Governor Guy Carleton at Montreal on September 24, 1775. Allen’s misguided and undermanned attack on Montreal led to his capture by the British and imprisonment in Pendennis Castle in Cornwall, England. Although a failure in the short term, Allen’s attack had long-term benefits for the Patriots. Carleton had focused his attention on suppressing Allen’s attack, while refusing reinforcements to Fort St. Jean, to which Montgomery’s expedition laid siege from August 21 to November 3, 1775. Fort St. Jean’s commander, Major Charles Preston, surrendered on November 3, fearful of the hardship the town’s civilians would face during a winter under siege. With the final fortification between Montgomery and Montreal in Patriot hands and Carleton’s defenses depleted by the conflict with Allen, Montgomery’s forces entered Montreal with ease on November 13.

After Montgomery’s success at winning Montreal for the Patriots, Carleton escaped and fled to Quebec City, where he and Montgomery would, in December, again face one another in a climatic battle that would determine the fate of the Patriot invasion of Canada.

Facing the year-end expiration of their troops’ enlistment, Patriot forces advanced on Quebec under the cover of a blizzard at approximately 4 a.m. on December 31, 1775. The British defenders under Carleton were ready, however, and when Montgomery’s forces came within 50 yards of the city’s fortifications, the British opened fire with a barrage of artillery and musket fire. Montgomery was killed in the first assault, and after several more attempts at penetrating Quebec’s defenses, his men were forced to retreat.

Meanwhile, Colonel Benedict Arnold’s division suffered a similar fate during their attack on the northern wall of the city. A two-gun battery opened fire on the advancing Americans, killing a number of troops and wounding Benedict Arnold in the leg. Patriot Daniel Morgan assumed command and made progress against the defenders, but halted at the second wall of fortifications to wait for reinforcements. By the time the rest of Arnold’s army finally arrived, the British had reorganized, forcing the Patriots to call off their attack. Of the 900 Americans who participated in the siege, 60 were killed or wounded and more than 400 were captured.

The remaining Patriot forces then retreated from Canada. Benedict Arnold remained in Canadian territory until the last of his soldiers had crossed the St. Lawrence River to safety. With the pursuing British forces almost in firing range, Arnold checked one last time to make sure all his men had escaped, then shot his horse and fled down the St. Lawrence in a canoe.

Carleton had successfully snatched victory from the jaws of defeat and secured Canada for the British empire.

President George Washington

On November 13, 1789, George Washington, inaugurated as the first president of the United States in April, returned to Washington at the end of his first presidential tour.

For four weeks, Washington traveled by stagecoach through New England, visiting all the northern states that had ratified the U.S. Constitution. Washington, the great Revolutionary War hero and first leader of the new republic, was greeted by enthusiastic crowds wherever he went. Major William Jackson, who was Washington’s aide-de-camp during the Revolutionary War, accompanied the president, along with a private secretary and nine servants, including several slaves. The group traveled as far north as Kittery, Maine, which was still a part of Massachusetts at the time.

Two years later, President Washington embarked on his first presidential visit to the southern states, making a 1,887-mile round-trip journey from his estate at Mount Vernon, Virginia.

General George McClellan

On this day in 1861, President Abraham Lincoln paid a late night visit to General George McClellan, who Lincoln had recently named general in chief of the Union army. The general retired to his chambers before speaking with the president.

This was the most famous example of McClellan’s cavalier disregard for the president’s authority. Lincoln had tapped McClellan to head the Army of the Potomacâ€”the main Union army in the Eastâ€”in July 1861 after the disastrous Union defeat at the First Battle of Bull Run, Virginia. McClellan immediately began to build an effective army, and was elevated to general in chief after Winfield Scott resignedthat fall. McClellan drew praise for his military initiatives but quickly developed a reputation for his arrogance and contempt toward the political leaders in Washington, D.C. After being named to the top army post, McClellan began openly associating with Democratic leaders in Congress and showing his disregard for the Republican administration. To his wife,McClellan wrote that Lincoln was “nothing more than a well-meaning baboon,” and Secretary of State William Seward was an “incompetent little puppy.”

Lincoln made frequent evening visits to McClellan’s house to discuss strategy. On November 13, Lincoln, Seward, and presidential secretary John Hay stopped by to see the general. McClellan was out, so the trio waited for his return. After an hour, McClellan came in and was told by a porter that the guests were waiting. McClellan headed for his room without a word, and only after Lincoln waited another half-hour was the group informed of McClellan’s retirement to bed. Hay felt that the president should have been greatly offended, but Lincoln replied that it was “better at this time not to be making points of etiquette and personal dignity.” Lincoln made no more visits to the general’s home. In March 1862, the president removed McClellan as general in chief of the army.

On this day in 1941, the United States Congress amended the Neutrality Act of 1935 to allow American merchant ships access to war zones, thereby putting U.S. vessels in the line of fire.

In anticipation of another European war, and in pursuit of an isolationist foreign policy, Congress passed the Neutrality Act in August 1935, forbidding the sale of munitions by U.S. firms to any and all belligerents in any future war. This was a not-so-subtle signal to all governments and private industries, domestic and foreign, that the United States would play no part in foreign wars. Less than two years later, a second Neutrality Act was passed, forbidding the export of arms to either side in the Spanish Civil War.

The original 1935 act was made even more restrictive in May 1937, forbidding not only arms and loans to warring nations, but giving the president of the United States the authority to forbid Americans from traveling on ships of any warring nation, to forbid any U.S. ship from carrying U.S. goods, even nonmilitary, to a belligerent, and to demand that a belligerent nation pay for U.S. nonmilitary goods before shipment–a “cash and carry” plan.

But such notions of strict neutrality changed quickly once World War II began. The first amendment to the act came as early as September 1939; President Roosevelt, never happy with the extreme nature of the act, fought with Congress to revise it, allowing for the sale of munitions to those nations under siege by Nazi Germany. After heated debate in a special session, Congress finally passed legislation permitting such sales. Addressing the prospect of direct U.S. intervention in the war, President Roosevelt proclaimed, also in September 1939, that U.S. territorial waters were a neutral zone, and any hostile power that used those waters for the prosecution of the war would be considered “unfriendly” and “offensive.”

Finally, when the U.S. destroyer Reuben James was sunk by a German sub in October 1941, the Neutrality Act was destined for the dustbin of history. By November, not only would merchant ships be allowed to arm themselves for self-defense, but they would also be allowed to enter European territorial waters. America would no longer stand aloof from the hostilities.

President Harry S. Truman

On this day in 1945, President Harry Truman announces the establishment of a panel of inquiry to look into the settlement of Jews in Palestine.

In the last weeks of World War II, the Allies liberated one death camp after another in which the German Nazi regime had held and slaughtered millions of Jews. Surviving Jews in the formerly Nazi-occupied territories were left without family, homes, jobs or savings.

In August 1945, Truman received the Harrison report, which detailed the plight of Jews in post-war Germany, and it became clear to him that something had to be done to speed up the process of finding Jewish refugees a safe place to live.

In late August, Truman contacted British Prime Minister Clement Attlee to propose that Jewish refugees be allowed to immigrate to Palestine, which at the time was occupied by Britain. Attlee responded that he would look into the matter and asked for a joint Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry to examine the complicated issue of integrating Jewish settlers into territory that was home to an Arab majority. Meanwhile, two U.S. senators introduced a resolution in Congress demanding the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine.

In April 1946, the committee issued its report, which recommended the immigration of 100,000 Jewish refugees to Palestine. Truman wrote to Attlee for his help in moving the repatriation process forward. However, by mid-1946, the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff had weighed in, bringing up the question of who would control the lucrative oil fields in a region that had the potential for unstable political and cultural relations between Jews and Arabs. Since the threat of communist expansion into politically unstable regions then dictated most of U.S. foreign policy, Truman and Attlee became convinced by their respective military advisors that Jewish communist sympathizers in a new Jewish state might jeopardize the west’s access to Middle Eastern oil. The settlement plans were put on hold.

Truman was again inundated with requests for help from the Jewish community. The issue of the establishment of a Jewish state was debated and delayed for another two years even though the newly formed United Nations, which had no enforcement power without the participation of the United States and Great Britain, had decided in favor of a Jewish state by 1946.

On November 13, 1955, FBI agents searched the home of John Graham, a chief suspect in the United Airlines plane explosion that killed all 44 people on board on November 1. The jet, which exploded shortly after departing from Denver, contained a hole near the cargo hold and traces of dynamite residue, suggesting that a bomb was responsible for the crash. Within a week, FBI agents began delving into the background of everyone connected to the flight.

One of the passengers on board the flight, Daisie King, was a wealthy woman traveling to visit her daughter. Although the suitcase that she had checked-in had been obliterated by the explosion, her carry-on bag contained a newspaper clipping about her son, John Graham, who had been involved in forgery and theft. When FBI agents questioned Graham on November 10, he told the detectives that his mother had packed shotgun ammunition in her suitcase. Graham’s wife provided more intriguing information: just before Graham took his mother to the airport, he had placed a gift-wrapped package in her luggage, explaining that the present was a jewelry tool kit. Graham denied any knowledge of this gift but the FBI obtained a search warrant to investigate further.

A search of the Graham home turned up the ammunition that Mrs. King had allegedly packed, a small roll of copper wire, and a life insurance policy for Mrs. King, naming Graham as the designated beneficiary. Graham’s wife later revealed that he had ordered her to claim that she had been mistaken about the gift package.

Faced with mounting evidence against him, Graham suddenly confessed to planting a bomb in his mother’s suitcase. He told the agents that he had taken a job in an electronics store to learn how to construct the bomb, which consisted of 25 sticks of dynamite, a battery, and a timer. At his televised trial, Graham retracted his confession but was found guilty. He was executed in the gas chamber in January 1957.

November 13, 1967, President Lyndon Johnson was briefed on the situation in Vietnam by General William Westmoreland, Ambassador Ellsworth Bunker, and Robert W. Komer, the head of the Civil Operations and Revolutionary Development Support program. They painted an optimistic picture that led Johnson to state on television on November 17 that, while much remained to be done, “We are inflicting greater losses than we’re taking…We are making progress.” Such pronouncements haunted President Johnson and his advisers only two months later, when the communists launched a massive offensive during the Tet New Year holiday in January 1968. Activists, critics, and rioting protesters against the Vietnam War began their loud chant “Hey, Hey, LBJ; how many kids have you killed today?” which came from a Bill Frederick song. That song continued until Lyndon Baines Johnson was no longer the president.

On November 13, 1970, an immense tidal wave and storm surge caused by a powerful cyclone killed hundreds of thousands of people in East Pakistan. The exact amount will never be known and there some researchers report that it was up to a million. Now known as Bangladesh, it’s a nation squeezed between India and Burma, seven of the greatest cyclones of the 20th century were in this exact same area. In fact, this was at least the third disaster in the Bangladesh region to kill at least 300,000 people during the past century.

The delta area where the Ganges and Brahmaputra rivers flow into the warm waters of the Bay of Bengal, is an extension of the Indian Ocean, forming the largest delta in the world. These rivers carry silt from as far away as the Himalayas into the low-lying floodplain of what is now Bangladesh, creating one of the world’s most fertile croplands. A third of the country is less than 20 feet above water, and the floodplain is densely populated. This overpopulation has forced farmers farther and farther out into the delta, where they face greater dangers during the annual cyclone season. The shape of the coastline acts as a natural funnel for storm surges during this time, easily drawing deep water up the river channels.

The storm began on November 10, 1,000 miles south of East Pakistan in the Indian Ocean. As the storm approached land late on the night of November 12, wind speeds varied from 75 to 100 miles per hour. Just after midnight, the storm surge waves–amplified by the fact that it was high tide, reached 30 feet and swept over the low-lying land and small islands where most of the population resided.

The storm struck at harvest time, meaning that there were many migrant workers in the area as well. It is estimated that 1,300 people were living in the region per square mile and there was very little in the way of a transportation network that would allow for mass evacuations. Even worse, many of the people in the area that evening had no warning whatsoever about the approaching storm. When the tidal wave and storm surges hit, thousands were swept away from their homes in an instant who had been asleep in their beds. Nearly 46,000 out of 77,000 fishermen perished in this cyclone

The disaster was so severe that only rough estimates of the death toll are available. Some researchers believe it is possible that as many as 500,000 to 1 million people perished. Disease and hunger were rampant throughout the region in the weeks following the storm, as the government was not able to handle the scale of the needed relief efforts. Nearly 1 million people were left homeless, half a million livestock were killed and millions of acres of rice fields were destroyed.

The West Pakistani government received heavy condemnation for its lack of preparedness or warnings prior to the cyclone. After the devastating cyclone was gone, the government still acted slowly in response. That produced an independent Bangladesh in 1971. That was the year George Harrison organized the Concert for Bangladesh at Madison Square Garden in New York City, the first-ever rock concert held to raise money for disaster relief.

On this day in 1945, President Harry Truman announced the establishment of a panel of inquiry to look into the settlement of Jews in Palestine.

In Washington, as a prelude to the second moratorium against the war scheduled for the following weekend, protesters staged a symbolic “March Against Death.” The march began at 6 p.m. November 13, 1969, and drew over 45,000 participants, each with a placard bearing the name of a soldier who had died in Vietnam. The marchers began at Arlington National Cemetery and continued past the White House, where they called out the names of the dead. The march lasted for two days and nights. This demonstration and the moratorium that followed did not produce a change in official policy–although President Nixon was deeply angered by the protests, he publicly feigned indifference and they had no impact on his prosecution of the war.

On November 13, 1979, in the middle of a game at the Municipal Auditorium in Kansas City, Philadelphia 76ers center Darryl Dawkins leapt over Kansas City Kings forward Bill Robinzine and slam-dunks the basketball, shattering the fiberglass backboard. The result, according to people who were at the game, was a sound like a bomb going off in the middle of the court. Shards of glass were everywhere: They nicked Robinzine all over his legs and arms and gotten stuck in Dr. J’s Afro. “It wasn’t really a safe thing to do,” Dawkins chuckled later, “but it was a Darryl Dawkins thing to do.”

When the 6’10″, 260-pound Dawkins joined the 76ers in 1975, he became the first NBA player to be drafted right out of high school. He gave himself the nickname “Chocolate Thunder” and set about making himself the most entertaining player in the league. His slam-dunks were enormous crowd pleasers, and he named them all: the In-Your-Face Disgrace, the Look Out Below, the Turbo Sexophonic Delight, the Rim-Wrecker, the Go-Rilla, the Spine Chiller Supreme, the Cover Your Head, the Yo Mama and–his favorite–the Get-Out-of-the-Waying, Backboard-Swaying, Game-Delaying, If-You-Ain’t-Grooving-You-Best-Get-Moving Dunk. His Kansas City glass-breaker had a name befitting its magnitude: Dawkins called it the Chocolate-Thunder-Flying, Robinzine-Crying, Teeth-Shaking, Glass-Breaking, Rump-Roasting, Bun-Toasting, Wham-Bam Glass-Breaker-I-Am Jam.

A few weeks later Dawkins did it again, this time at the Philadelphia Spectrum. After that, NBA Commissioner Larry O’Brien called the young player into his office and made him a stern promise: Every time Dawkins broke a backboard, O’Brien said, he’d be fined $5,000 and suspended. (On the one hand, the spectacular dunks were bringing publicity and attention to the struggling NBA; on the other, they caused interminable game delays while janitors swept up the glass, and–of course–they were dangerous.) Soon, the league installed shatter-proof backboards with breakaway rims in every arena.

Dawkins’ glass-shattering monster dunks remain some of the most enduring images of a particularly flamboyant moment in the history of the NBA. He went on to play basketball in Italy–where he shattered several non-Dawkins-proofed backboards–and to coach the Pennsylvania ValleyDawgs, a team in the United States Basketball League.

On November 13, 1982, near the end of a weeklong national salute to Americans who served in the Vietnam War, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial was dedicated in Washington after a march to its site by thousands of veterans of the conflict. The long-awaited memorial was a simple V-shaped black-granite wall inscribed with the names of the 57,939 Americans who died in the conflict, arranged in order of death, not rank, as was common in other memorials.

The designer of the memorial was Maya Lin, a Yale University architecture student who entered a nationwide competition to create a design for the monument. Lin, born in Ohio in 1959, was the daughter of Chinese immigrants. Many veterans’ groups were opposed to Lin’s winning design, which lacked a standard memorial’s heroic statues and stirring words. However, a remarkable shift in public opinion occurred in the months after the memorial’s dedication. Veterans and families of the dead walked the black reflective wall, seeking the names of their loved ones killed in the conflict. Once the name was located, visitors often made an etching or left a private offering, from notes and flowers to dog tags and cans of beer.

The Vietnam Veterans Memorial soon became one of the most visited memorials in the nation’s capital. A Smithsonian Institution director called it “a community of feelings, almost a sacred precinct,” and a veteran declared that “it’s the parade we never got.” “The Wall” drew together both those who fought and those who marched against the war and served to promote national healing a decade after the divisive conflict’s end.

1985

Nevado del Ruiz, the highest active volcano in the Andes Mountains of Colombia, suffered a mild eruption that generates a series of lava flows and surges over the volcano’s broad ice-covered summit. Flowing mixtures of water, ice, pumice, and other rock debris poured off the summit and sides of the volcano, forming “lahars” that flooded into the river valleys surrounding Ruiz. The lahars joined normal river channels, and massive flooding and mudslides was exacerbated by heavy rain. Within four hours of the eruption, the lahars traveled over 60 miles, killing more than 23,000 people, injuring over 5,000, and destroying more than 5,000 homes. Hardest hit was the town of Armero, where three quarters of the 28,700 inhabitants died.

The volcano first began showing signs of an imminent eruption a full year before, and most of the river valley’s residents would have survived had they have moved to higher ground.

Paris tonight

French President Francois Hollande

And today…. November 13, 2015…. Here is the headline story to this hour……

TERRORISTS WIELDING AK-47S and hurling explosives executed at least 118 people at a Paris concert hall, after at least 40 people were killed elsewhere in coordinated attacks that rocked the French capital. Near simultaneous attacks on entertainment sites around Paris – a soccer match, an elegant restaurant, and a concert hall. French media have so far reported 158 people murdered, many more injured. Hostages who were held by the terrorists in whatever later had a grenade thrown at them in the famous concert hall where the California group The Eagles Of Death were performing.

Dozens of people escaped from the rock venue by climbing onto its roof.

Frederic Nowak, who was at the Eagles Of Death concert with his 23-year-old son, told the Telegraph that he was one of them.

“It was about 30 minutes into the concert when I saw two men firing into the crowd with machine guns. I at first hid behind a speaker. The men were firing wildly into the crowd and even at people lying on the ground.

Then I followed some people who were running out through a door to the right of the stage. It led to stairs but all the doors off the stairs were locked. We were stuck there for about ten minutes. There were thirty or forty people there.

Then we went further up the stairs and arrived at the roof. We got out through a window and we saw a man whose apartment was in the building next door waving to us.

We made out way over the rooftop and he let us in through his attic window. We stayed there until we heard the police raiding the venue a while later.”

Mr Kowak said he got a good look at just one of the shooters. He said he was young, probably in his 20s, and dressed casually.

The apparently coordinated gun and bomb attacks came as the country, a founder member of the U.S.-led coalition waging air strikes against Islamic State fighters in Syria and Iraq, was already on high alert for terrorist attacks ahead of a global climate conference that opens later this month.

Western security sources said they suspected an Islamist militant group was behind the carnage.

At least two explosions were heard near the Stade de France national stadium where a France-Germany friendly soccer match was being played, attended by President Francois Hollande.

The match continued until the end, but panic broke out in the crowd as rumors of the attack spread and spectators were held in the stadium and assembled spontaneously.

TF1 television said up to 35 people were dead near the soccer stadium, including two suspected suicide bombers in the attack in the neighborhood of Saint Denis, north of central Paris.

Up to 100 people, the largest amount of casualties, were killed in a hostage crisis at the famous city French theater. This was the deadliest attack on French soil since the second World War. “Please come help us! They are shooting people one by one! First floor, quick!” wrote one Facebook user wrote.

A young man who was inside the Bataclan has given a detailed account of what happened. He said:

It was chaos. I was on the right of the room in the Bataclan, an Eagles of Death Metal song was about to finish, when I heard the sound of explosions like fire crackers.

I saw the guitarist take off his guitar, I turned around, and I saw a guy with an automatic weapon firing into the air.

Everyone got onto the ground. From that moment, instinct kicked in. With each volley you try to get as far away as possible from the gunmen – impossible to say how many, it all went by too quickly.

I tried, with some other people, to get onto the stage where there was an emergency exit on the right.

And there it was chaos, people were terrified, pleading to survive, and others pushed and pulled at us to get behind the stage.

We hid in a room on the right, by the stage, thinking that it was an exit, but no.

A member of staff in the room said that the emergency exit was on the other side of the room.

We still heard shooting. After a few more seconds or minutes, nothing, and we saw people edging towards the emergency exit – when I think about it, the gunmen must have been reloading at that point.

All of our group then decided to cross, passing behind the rear curtain. Then we found ourselves outside, and ran towards the boulevard.

We heard shooting in the street where we were but I didn’t look back. I ran, like all the world ran, towards Bastille. On the road there were already many police in cars and motorbikes heading towards the venue.

I went home, I’m OK. Others can’t say the same thing.

I wasn’t frightened, and I’m not (yet) in shock. I’m writing this so I don’t forget.

ISIS adherents celebrated the horrific terror attacks across Paris late Friday, creating hashtags declaring “Paris in flames” well before the devastating scope of the worst attacks to hit Paris since World War II was clear to the world.

Vocativ deep web analysts discovered ISIS extremists celebrating the sophisticated and well-coordinated attacks within minutes of the initial explosions and gunfire. “O crusaders we are coming to you with bombs and rifles,” a top propagandist from an unofficial ISIS media wing tweeted in Arabic. He ended the tweet ominously: “Wait for us.”

“The infidels were happy in the liberating of Sinjar at the morning, and at night they slap themselves for Paris,” declares another tweet discovered by Vocativ deep web analysts.

French President Francois Hollande declared a state of emergency and closed the country’s borders as the fear spread across a city still healing from the Charlie Hebdo attacks in January. The border controls in place appear are aimed at people leaving France, not entering. Nevertheless, American Airlines has canceled all flights to France until further notice.

A French government official said the country’s state of emergency has gone into effect and that President Francois Hollande is cancelling his trip to the G-20 meeting in Turkey.

Hollande was due to leave on Saturday for the meeting in Turkey, which was to focus in large part on growing fears of terrorism carried out by Islamic extremists.

The government will hold a defense council meeting in the morning.

The United Nations Security Council condemned the “barbaric and cowardly terrorist attacks”.

“The Security Council underlined the need to bring the perpetrators of these terrorist acts to justice,” the 15-member council said in a statement.

Nato Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said the Atlantic defence alliance would stand with France “strong and united” against terrorism:

Stoltenberg tweeted: I am deeply shocked by the horrific terrorist attacks across Paris tonight. My thoughts are with the families of the victims, with all those affected, and with the people of France. We stand strong and united in the fight against terrorism. Terrorism will never defeat democracy.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel says she is “deeply shaken by the news and pictures that are reaching us from Paris”. The German leader issued a statement saying her thoughts were with the victims “of the apparent terrorist attack”.

Friday on ABC’s “Good Morning America,” President Barack Obama seemingly downplayed the threat of ISIS in an interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos that aired on Friday’s broadcast of “Good Morning America.”

Stephanopoulos asked Obama if ISIS was gaining in strength, to which Obama denied they were.

“I don’t think they’re gaining strength,” Obama responded. “What is true is that from the start, our goal has been first to contain and we have contained them. They have not gained ground in Iraq, and in Syria they’ll come in, they’ll leave, but you don’t see this systemic march by ISIL across the terrain.”

“What we have not yet been able to do is to completely decapitate their command and control structures,” he admitted. “We’ve made some progress in trying to reduce the flow of foreign fighters and part our goal has to be to recruit more effective Sunni partners in Iraq to really go on offense rather than simply engage in defense.”

According to a letter written to President Obama and signed by dozens of law enforcement officials, The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has nearly 1,000 active probes involving the terrorist group Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) inside the United States and they are urging the President not to release the inmates of Guantánamo into America or anywhere else. They stress the danger involved if you should release Guantánamo’s prisoners to either America or their own countries.

President Obama spoke again this evening following the destruction, murder, and mayhem in Paris. This is an exact transcript of what he said:

“Good evening, everybody. I want to make a few brief comments about the attacks across Paris tonight. Once again we’ve seen an outrageous attempt to terrorize innocent civilians. This is an attack not just on Paris. It’s an attack not just on the people of France, but this is an attack on all of humanity and the universal values we share. We stand prepared and ready to provide whatever assistance the government and people of France need to respond. France is our oldest ally. The French people have stood shoulder-to-shoulder with the United States time and again. We want to be very clear that we stand together with them in the fight against terrorism and extremism. Paris itself represents the timeless values of human progress. Those who think that they can terrorize the people of France or the values that they stand for are wrong. The American people draw strength from the French people’s commitment to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness. We are reminded in this time of tragedy that the bonds of liberty and eternity, not just the values French people share but we share.

“Those go far beyond any act of terrorism or the hateful vision of those who perpetrated the crimes this evening. We’re going to do whatever it takes to work with the French people and with nations around the world to bring these terrorists to justice and to go after any terrorist networks that go after our people. We don’t yet know all the details of what has happened. We have been in contact with French officials to communicate our deepest condolences to the families of those who’ve been killed, to offer our prayers and thoughts to those who’ve been wounded. We have offered our full support to them. The situation is still unfolding. I’ve chosen not to call President Hollande at this time because my expectation is that he is very busy at the moment. I actually by coincidence was talking to him earlier today in preparation for the G-20 meeting.

But I am confident that I’ll be in direct communications with him in the next few days. And we’ll be coordinating in any ways that they think are helpful in the investigation of what’s happened. This is a heartbreaking situation. and obviously those of us here in the United States know what it’s like. We’ve gone through these kinds of episodes ourselves. and whenever these kinds of attacks happened, we’ve always been able to count on the French people to stand with us. They have been an extraordinary counterterrorism partner, and we intend to be there with them in that same fashion. I’m sure that in the days ahead we’ll learn more about exactly what happened, and my teams will make sure that we are in communication with the press to provide you accurate information. I don’t want to speculate at this point in terms of who was responsible for this. It appears that there may still be live activity and dangers that are taking place as we speak. And and until we know from French officials that the situation is under control and we have more information about it, I don’t want to speculate. OK, thank you very much.”

Tonight on Fox News, Shepard Smith said “This kind of multiple carnage has never happened before in the history of the modern world.” Many news sources are saying tonight that this could be the beginning of World War 3.

Today in History with Ray – November 13