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If it is remotely serious, then I can see this as the beginning of a process similar to that which converted Yassir Arafat into a statesman from his earlier "dirty terrorist" days.
If the "war" drags on long enough and he consistently pretends to be a statesman (even if he doesn't have a state) then people will start to think of him as someone to negotiate with. But this is a long process.
Someone summed it up somewhere I read today as "Bin Laden wants a truce in Iraq but not in America" which is probably true. But mostly I think it is just place nice for the home crowd where there is a much bigger element willing to give him the benefit of the doubt.
While I do think there are elements in this country with more sympathy for Bin Laden's way of thinking than our government's, I think they are extremely fringe and that no liberal spokesman with any credibility or standing would even suggest negotiation with Bin Laden for years to come. But that was true of Israelis and Arafat as well at one time but eventually a "peace at any cost" faction will arise (and when it does it will likely be from the left just because of the nature of such things) and then will slowly morph into a larger more mainstream movement. I think that is a decades long process, though (eventually most people under 30 will be too young to remember waking up and watching the second plane hit and it will just be an intellectual rather than a visceral event; much like D-Day is for us now).
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