> The modern Supreme Court majority contradicts itself from one day to the next. See how they claim it's legal to fire officials of independent agencies like the FTC without cause, but illegal to fire officials of the Federal Reserve without cause, despite the Fed being an independent agency like the FTC. The decision is nonsense, and any organization that makes decisions like this is broken.

Bingo

Right but that government got put in charge after the US-led invasion and war. Before the war the Taliban was already in power.

Some of those were (limited) unilateral strikes but a lot of those were multinational endeavors done with the blessing of the international community.

If we had President Gore we would have done a lot more and a lot earlier re: climate change. Probably the biggest missed opportunity in our lifetime.

I remember reading that Clinton's team was very concerned about Al Qaeda, but the Bush team ignored their warnings. It might have been very different with Al Gore in command.

But this article portrays it differently: https://time.com/archive/6738066/the-truth-of-the-matter/

> In his strongest public statement, to 60 Minutes, [Richard] Clarke said Bush “ignored” the terrorist threat before 9/11. To the commission he testified, more soberly, that, for the Administration, it was an “important issue but not an urgent issue.” Clearly, the Clinton White House worried more. Clinton National Security Adviser Sandy Berger remembers telling his successor, Rice, during the transition that, for the Bush team, “the No. 1 issue that you’re going to be dealing with is terrorism generally and al-Qaeda specifically.”

> The record of the Bush Administration’s first half-year suggests its members didn’t buy it. They were more focused on Russia, China and especially missile defense. In his book Bush at War, Bob Woodward quotes Bush himself saying of Osama bin Laden, “There was a significant difference in my attitude after September 11. I was not on point, but I knew he was a menace … But I didn’t feel that sense of urgency.”

> Clarke’s strongest argument in this dispute is the pace with which the Administration considered the plan he proposed on Jan. 25, 2001 for combatting al-Qaeda. The program had evolved during the Clinton years, as al-Qaeda bombed U.S. embassies in Africa in 1998 and then the U.S.S. Cole in Yemen in 2000. The Bush team put the proposal through an April meeting of senior officials, took their time with it over the summer and finally brought it to Bush’s Cabinet-level security and foreign policy chiefs, who approved it, just a week before 9/11. None of that suggests it was a national-security priority.

The grudge was for trying to assassinate his father. IIRC, one of the soldiers attending Saddam's hanging at Camp Justice got a call on his cell phone moments before the execution and gave the phone to Saddam. Who do you think was on the line?

Invading Iraq was always part of the neocon agenda. 9/11 provided a useful pretext, but it was always going to happen.

Nothing, they're just trolling. Not even an American either: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49633555

>What are you actually saying constructively here, if anything at all?

That the vast majority of people that "want reform" actually just want a Supreme Court whose majority always sides with them.

The article you linked doesn’t mention that Saddam answered a call right before his execution… which is what you implied earlier