Less than a year after the aide's delusional rant, the US was embroiled in its most disastrous military intervention for a generation and one of the most gruesomely pointless wars of modern times.
Two of the three physicians most embroiled in the mess were struck off the medical register.
In the past, the bank was embroiled in scandals, most notably the still-murky 1982 death of Roberto Calvi, the chairman of Banco Ambrosiano, known as God's banker because of his ties to the Holy See.
The Liberal Democrat leader, Nick Clegg, was embroiled in the most difficult crisis of his leadership on Sunday after he admitted he had been aware of concerns about sexual harassment by a senior party figure more than four years ago.
The Londoner might well have had by his bedside table a copy of Norman Angell's "The Great Illusion", which laid out the argument that Europe's economies were so integrated that war was futile.Yet within a year, the world was embroiled in a most horrific war.
But McCain also became embroiled in the most spectacular case to arise out of the savings and loan scandals of the 1980s, as a result of his connections with Charles Keating, Jr., the head of the Lincoln Savings and Loan Association of Irvine, California, who had engaged in fraud.
On both the left and right of the party, the two strands most embroiled in the party's current faction-fighting (and, to be blunt, enjoying every minute) will have the least to do with what eventually emerges from the mess.
Then on 7 July, Hamas claimed responsibility for firing rockets at Israel for the first time since 2012, and Hamas and Israel became embroiled in the most intensive fighting for months.
