Did Osama send election threat?

SO, DID we all miss the point? Was Osama bin Laden actually threatening voters in today's election when he made his new, risen-from-the-missing video?

A Washington-based organization claimed yesterday that he was and that what the arch-terrorist meant to say was that states voting for President Bush could put themselves in harm's way in a future al Qaeda attack.

That supposed warning to "red states" was lost in muddled American translations released with the video last week, the Middle East Media Research Institute claimed.

But translation problems or no, experts at a variety of prominent think tanks disagreed with the idea that bin Laden was preparing to sort out safe states from target states.

They said his gripes against the United States have never stopped at state lines - and aren't likely to now.

"Why would he make a difference between California, Ohio, Pennsylvania? These are all American states," said Omer Taspinar, an expert in foreign policy studies at the liberal-oriented Brookings Institution. "Al Qaeda would attack where it's going to attack.

"If he had wanted to target states, he would have easily said, 'Any state that votes for Bush is on our list of targets.'...He would have given a direct warning."

Farther to the right on the political spectrum, a scholar for the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research granted that the remarks overall could be seen as "an attempt by bin Laden to damn President Bush and damn those that have support for him."

But should voters worry? "No, I don't think you should," said AEI fellow Reuel Gerecht. "I think you should put it in context."

That context, he said, is that while the man behind the Sept. 11 attacks remains a serious threat through his appeal to Islamic extremists, bin Laden has not yet mustered resources for a new attack.

"If bin Laden could have hit us again, he certainly would have."

The Middle East Media Research Institute was set up by a former Israeli military intelligence officer, said Juan Cole, a history professor and Middle East expert at the University of Michigan.

Yesterday, in an "alert" first reported in the New York Post, the organization said bin Laden's meaning had been lost in the general American translation of the Arabic "ay-wilaya" as "state." When read in context, the word "state" appears to refer to nations.

But if the terrorist had really meant nations, rather than states like Tennessee, he would have used the Arabic "dawla," the organization said.

The translation makes a big difference in the bin Laden excerpt central to the group's argument. In the widely distributed translation, that excerpt reads: "Your security is not in the hands of [Democratic presidential candidate John F.] Kerry or Bush or al Qaeda. Your security is in your own hands, and each state that does not harm our security will remain safe."

"State" has been generally taken as an international reference. Earlier in the video, bin Laden mentioned that al Qaeda had made no attack on neutral Sweden.

The research institute, however, said "each state" really means each of the 50 states of the United States.

Cole said the Arabic word used by bin Laden does appear to be an archaic usage but that the research institute's other assumptions made no sense.

Bin Laden says "your security doesn't depend on which candidate you put in...Your security depends on whether you leave Muslims the hell alone," Cole said.

Bruce Hoffman, director of the Rand Corp.'s Washington office, said bin Laden's main message "was not about...affecting the results of an election," particularly since both Bush and Kerry have vowed to track him down.

In view of that common stance, Hoffman said, it's "a stretch to say that bin Laden is saying how each state should vote."

And which candidate would bin Laden really prefer to win?

Said Hoffman: "Bin Laden is the only one who knows."