Cheney fallacy: insurgents' wishes

From the Washington Post, one week before the 2006 elections:

Cheney, meanwhile, said in an interview with Fox News that he thinks insurgents in Iraq are timing their attacks to influence the U.S. elections.

"It's my belief that they're very sensitive of the fact that we've got an election scheduled," he said. Cheney said the insurgents believe "they can break the will of the American people," and "that's what they're trying to do."

Hmmm... Let's assume that these are, in fact, the intentions of the insurgents. Does this mean that the party in power should automatically be given a pass, and always win, just because some terror group, somewhere, is acting up?

This reminds me of how commentators in the US read the election of the socialist governmment in Spain, shortly after the Madrid train bombing attack, as a capitulation to Islamic terror. The actual cause-and-effect was not so simple: the Conservative Government in power panicked when the attacks happened and immediately blamed the wrong group, ETA, and even claimed to have proof of it. The Spanish voters punished this and drove them out of office.

Going back to the implication that the terrorists want the Republicans to lose: Actually, the contrary might be true: there seems to be evidence that Al-Qaeda, in 2004, was not rooting for the Bush ticket to lose, and hence the appearance of a bin Laden video late in the campaign. Of course, this does not mean that Kerry deserved to win just because of this (if true): the point is that the terrorist's wishes should not be factored so simplistically into an election!