Reply #5: FWIW, i think it's not really clear what he meant. Based on the Arabic

[KnowerOfLogic]

transcript i have (which i have no way of knowing for sure is accurate), bin Laden does *not* say:

"Any U.S. state that does not toy with our security automatically guarantees its own security."

IMO he says:
Any state which does not toy with our security guarantees its own security in return.

The key difference is that he does not say "U.S. State," he simply says "state." However, the word he uses, "willaya" is normally always used used to refer to a region or a province within a a larger sovereign country, and it is the same word normally used to refer to the individual american states. I think the trouble here is not so much the translation, it is simply a matter of him not being especially clear because you can't tell from the context whether he means each american state, or just any place or region in general. I tend to think it's the latter, but it's hard to tell.

P.S. the transcript i have is allegedly the complete one, which i think aljazeera released after the first edited version, specifically to counter to this idea that bin Laden threatened individual states, but again, i think it's just unclear what he meant.