it's partly from the revisionist/hypothetical school that says if JFK hadn't have been elected the US probably wouldn't have got involved in vietnam. if nixon was there first, there was no way that a democratic house would have allowed a republican prez to send the country dancing down the merry path that they *did* end up dancing down.

as for carter, the argument goes that if he had stuck with the shah and not `allowed` the ayotollah to take the reins - maybe a more moderate leader would have emerged who would have not acted as a catalyst for the poisonous rise of islamic fundamentalism over the whole region.

like the argument about JFK, it's probably wide open to scrutiny - but it's a straightforward deduction.

in the way that few repubs would admit that the mass graves probably stemmed from b41 high-tailing out of the gulf too soon, i'm not surprised that dems don't jump into debates about how their guys do for national security what the bush's have done for the economy. the diference being, while there's a precedent for how tax-cuts work (ref: JFK & Regan) the dems have no precedent to prove that they don't have their heads up their glory holes when it comes to the defense of the american people.