No, not Saddam to al Qaeda (which "W" claimed was "indistiquishable" when it came to the war on terror), but the historical links from Nixon, through Reagan to our current POTUS. With UN Ambassador Negroponte moving to Baghdad, and John Danforth taking his place, I couldn't help but remember the links that led us here, which like so many things go right back to the events that "changed everything." Not 9/11, but every major US scandal since WWII: McCarthyism, Watergate, Iran-Contra, right into the heart of present day Baghdad. Of course, If you have a scorecard, neither the players or the game has really changed, has it?

Defeating Hitler's Nazis required a D-Day, which required a leader of the caliber of Eisenhower. Ike required a running-mate which bagat Nixon. Nixon cut his teeth as an extremely effective member of Joseph McCarthy's House Unamerican Activities committee. He was an expert at the subtle linkage that could end carreers and lives. Let loose on the campaign trail as the designated attack dog:

Speaking in Indiana, Nixon described Stevenson as a man with a "PhD from Dean Acheson's cowardly college of Communist containment." In an attempt to link Stevenson with the Soviet spy ring he added: "Somebody had to testify for Alger Hiss, but you don't have to elect him President of the United States."

Nixon of course had his own problems once residing in the White House. His Solicitor General at the time was Robert Bork, who was given the dubious distinction of firing Special Prosecutor Archibal Cox and was the chief executioner in the "Saturday Night Massacre." Surely you remember the name from his highly contentious rejection by the US Sentate when he was nominated to the Supreme Court. When Bork left his seat as a Federal Appeal Judge on the DC circuit, the chair was filled by Clarence Thomas.

I have been criticized (perhaps justly) for referring to him as Justice "Uncle" Thomas. I will go only briefly into the reasons I believe he is an incompetent jurist, undeserving of Thurogood Marshall's chair, or why I developed a distaste for him while working as the only white guy in an all black law firm. 1990 was the year I passed the bar and Thomas was confirmed to SCOTUS. By then my mentor, attorney Ramon Basie (the "Count's" nephew, really) had been practicing law as long as I had been alive haveing been his clerk for a year by then, he taught me how to earn a living doing this legal stuff in and for the black community by the time I got my license.

Everybody, and I mean everybody discussed the Thomas confirmation back then. These folks had cut their legal teeth on the civil rights movement, litigated through the riots of the late 60's. They were sigularly unimpressed with Thomas's record at the EEOC for changing it from an instrument for social justice through the use of the class-action suit, to an agency that no longer supported the proposition that discrimination was a pandemic phenomenon , but merely occured on an individual, case by case (or coke can by coke can) basis. When we called him Uncle Thomas, he earned it, at least to my mind at that of all my black collegues. But my opinion doesn't get written up in the US Reporter like his do. I'm still entitled to it.

As Justice Thomas swore in his former Senate Sponsor, John Danforth as new UN Ambassador, the links from Watergate to McCarthyism to Iran-Contra and Baghdad became as clear to me as bin Laden to Hussein must be for Shrub.

Danforth takes over from the newly appointed Ambassador to Iraq, John Negroponte. My first exposure to Negroponte was during the Iran-Contra hearings. He was at the time Ambassador to Honduras, and a key figure in the arms for hostages/cash for illegal wars scandal for which he and fellow Shrub appointee Elliot Abrams should have been forever barred from holding a government position.

To his credit, Danforth, although another "true believer" in the christian conservatism that holds this administration hostage, he does have an honorable record. This archive is from my old neighborhood's local:

But U.S. Jewish officials are lauding John Danforth, an attorney, Episcopal priest and former Republican senator from Missouri, who will be sworn in Thursday to succeed John Negroponte.

Praised as a paragon of integrity, a crusader for human and civil rights, and a friend of Israel, Danforth is expected to stand up for the Jewish state -- and the moral calling of the United Nations.

Well, except for Clinton's Zippergate, nearly every scandal I could think of was brought back to my mind with that picture. Even Waco. It was the Danforth Committee's investigation which cleared Janet Reno of any wrongdoing in the episode with the Branch Davidians.

Oh the webs we weave.