WILLIAM SAFIRE también intepreta el video de Osama bin Laden como una admisión de que está perdiendo:

The big news in Osama bin Laden's message to American voters was not his intercession in our election; that clumsy ploy was not as successful as his pre-election panicking of Spain's voters.

Nor was the news his delight in the "pet goat" sequence in Michael Moore's Bush-bashing film, and his admonition that "Bush is still deceiving you and hiding the truth from you," echoing the central Kerry theme. Nor was it the frustrating fact that our Global Enemy No. 1 is alive and well and still at large.

The unremarked news is that this mass murderer evidently seeks a kind of truce. Although some coverage of his pre-election message noted an unexpected "conciliatory tone," we have not fixed on the reason for this change in his attitude.

"Each state that does not harm our security will remain safe," bin Laden promised, which was "why we did not attack Sweden, for example." His unmistakable import: if the U.S. were to stop our war on Qaeda terror, which has killed or captured an estimated 75 percent of his closest collaborators, that would be what he called "the ideal way to avoid another Manhattan ..." Stop warring on terror and you will "remain safe."

Generals do not call for a truce when they're winning. Only warriors thrust on the defensive become conciliatory, hoping that negotiations will give them time to regroup and resupply. Bin Laden's vain hope seems to be that the defeat of Bush will give him time to buy or steal a horrific weapon as an "equalizer."

ACTUALIZACIÓN. Por cierto, parece que la traducción que se hizo en un primer momento de lo que dijo el tío Osama no era exacta; según MEMRI, las amenazas no eran contra los EEUU como país, sino contra los estados concretos que se atrevieran a votar a Bush:

The U.S. media in general mistranslated the words "ay wilaya" (which means "each U.S. state")(2) to mean a "country" or "nation" other than the U.S., while in fact the threat was directed specifically at each individual U.S. state. This suggests some knowledge by bin Laden of the U.S. electoral college system. In a section of his speech in which he harshly criticized George W. Bush, bin Laden stated: "Any U.S. state that does not toy with our security automatically guarantees its own security."

The Islamist website Al-Qal'a explained what this sentence meant: "This message was a warning to every U.S. state separately. When he [Osama Bin Laden] said, 'Every state will be determining its own security, and will be responsible for its choice,' it means that any U.S. state that will choose to vote for the white thug Bush as president has chosen to fight us, and we will consider it our enemy, and any state that will vote against Bush has chosen to make peace with us, and we will not characterize it as an enemy. By this characterization, Sheikh Osama wants to drive a wedge in the American body, to weaken it, and he wants to divide the American people itself between enemies of Islam and the Muslims, and those who fight for us, so that he doesn't treat all American people as if they're the same. This letter will have great implications inside the American society, part of which are connected to the American elections, and part of which are connected to what will come after the elections."(3)

Another interesting aspect of the speech is the fact that while bin Laden made his specific threat to each U.S. state, he also offered an election deal to the American voters, attempting to influence the election by these means rather than influencing it through terrorist attacks.(4) This peace offer is a theme that follows up on his April speech directed to Europe, in which he offered a truce.

ACTUALIZACIÓN II. Es con editoriales como el de hoy con los que El País desconcierta de vez en cuando (gracias, Lola, por el aviso en comentarios): no sólo califica la situación en Afganistán como éxito y critica la retirada de parte del contingente español, sino que incluso al final se pregunta si algo parecido puede acabar teniendo lugar en... Iraq. Sí, sí; ahí. Fijaos que, salvo el hecho de que en este último lugar aún no han tenido en cuenta las elecciones, la lógica subyacente en el editorial podría aplicarse perfectamente al país mesopotámico.

Eso sí, como no podría haber sido de otro modo, ni se reconoce gracias a qué ni a quién ha sido posible ese éxito; ni, aún menos, se dice algo tan sencillo como "nos equivocamos".