Captive Soldier Appears on Taliban Video

Soldier Says on Tape that He's Scared He 'Won't Be Able to Go Home'

(AP)  Last updated at 11:54 p.m. EDT

The American soldier who went missing June 30 from his base in eastern Afghanistan and was later confirmed to have been captured, appeared on a video posted Saturday to a Web site by the Taliban.

Two U.S. defense officials confirmed to The Associated Press that the man in the video is the captured soldier. The video provide the first glimpse the public has had of the missing soldier.

The soldier is shown in the 28-minute video with his head shaved and the start of a beard. He is sitting and dressed in a nondescript, gray outfit. Early in the video one of his captors holds the soldier's dog tag up to the camera. His name and ID number are clearly visible. He is shown eating at one point and sitting on a bed.

The soldier, whose identity has not yet been released by the Pentagon pending notification of members of Congress and the soldier's family, says his name, age and hometown on the video, which was released Saturday on a Web site pointed out by the Taliban. Two U.S. defense officials confirmed to The Associated Press that the man in the video is the captured soldier.

The soldier said the date is July 14. He says he was captured when he lagged behind on a patrol.

He is interviewed in English by his captors, and he is asked his views on the war, which he calls extremely hard, his desire to learn more about Islam and the morale of American soldiers, which he said was low.

Asked how he was doing, the soldier said on the video:

"Well I'm scared, scared I won't be able to go home. It is very unnerving to be a prisoner."

He begins to answer questions in a matter-of-fact and sober voice, occasionally facing the camera, looking down and sometimes looking to the questioner on his left.

He later chokes up when discussing his family and his hope to marry his girlfriend.

"I have my girlfriend, who is hoping to marry," he said. "I have a very, very good family that I love back home in America. And I miss them every day when I'm gone. I miss them and I'm afraid that I might not ever see them again and that I'll never be able to tell them that I love them again and I'll never be able to hug them."

He is also prompted his interrogators to give a message to the American people.

"To my fellow Americans who have loved ones over here, who know what it's like to miss them, you have the power to make our government bring them home," he said. "Please, please bring us home so that we can be back where we belong and not over here, wasting our time and our lives and our precious life that we could be using back in our own country. Please bring us home. It is America and American people who have that power."

The video is not a continuous recording — it appears to stop and start during the questioning.

It is unclear from the video whether the July 14 date is authentic. The soldier says that he heard that a Chinook helicopter carrying 37 NATO troops had been shot down over Helmand. A helicopter was shot down in southern Afghanistan on July 14, but it was carrying civilians on a reported humanitarian mission for NATO forces. All six Ukrainian passengers died in the crash, and a child on the ground was killed.

On July 2, the U.S. military said an American soldier had disappeared after walking off his base in eastern Afghanistan with three Afghan counterparts and was believed to have been taken prisoner. A U.S. defense official said the soldier was noticed missing during a routine check of the unit on June 30 and was first listed as "duty status whereabouts unknown."

Details of such incidents are routinely held very tightly by the military as it works to retrieve a missing or captured soldier without giving away any information to captors.

But Afghan Police Gen. Nabi Mullakheil said the soldier went missing in eastern Paktika province near the border with Pakistan from an American base. The region is known to be Taliban-infested.

The most important insurgent group operating in that area is known as Haqqani network and is led by warlord Siraj Haqqani, whom the U.S. has accused of masterminding beheadings and suicide bombings including the July 2008 attack on the Indian Embassy in Kabul that killed some 60 people. The Haqqani group also was linked to an assassination attempt on Afghan president Hamid Karzai early last year.

On Saturday, a U.S. military official in Kabul, Col. Greg Julian, said the U.S. was "still doing everything we can to return him safely."

Julian said U.S. troops had distributed two flyers in the area where the soldier disappeared. One of them asked for information on the missing soldier and offered a $25,000 reward for his return. The other said "please return our soldier safely" or "we will hunt you," according to Julian.

[Yutika_Stha]

It's silly that the society is judging if he is worth saving or not??? Even though we don't know exactly how he got captured at the first place, it's our job to get him back because the reason why he was there at the first place is to fight for our country!
http://www.newsy.com/videos/captive_u_s_soldier_a_hero_or_a_deserter

His coworker talks about this soldier in a very humanizing way. He's just an ordinary person that deserves to be rescued!

[edward1975-2009]

If the US doesn't rescue this soldier and the Taliban holds true to form, he will be found dead. They are murderous cowards. They will use him for their propaganda tapes then discard him. Thoughts and prayers to this American hero.

[differnet]

You know, I have never read a bunch of sophomoric quotes in my life as I have read on this board. First, the media is not anyone's pawn. We are Americans. One news story is not going to change what we need to do. Second, Afghanistan is a completely different ball of wax than Iraq. It's a completely different enemy. Third, can we get a little real world. There are people in the world who will not resovle things peaceably. The Taliban shot women in the head for going out of their homes without a male relative. If you want to negotiate with people like that, than you are either a raving sexist or a lunatic. Finally, let the military do it's job. This young man is doing his job. He's trying to stay alive long enough for us to find him and extract him. Consider the job that was done in rescueing the captain held by pirates off the coast of Somalia. Give the military a clear mission and rules of engagement and then get out of their way. If it is possible to get this guy back alive, they will. I served during the Gulf War and while the miltiary is filled with human beings who can screw up, compared to the rest of society, I consider it one of the most competent organizations on the planet. When it screws up, it's generally because the politicians have their noses in the decision making process.

[warsucks]

Hear, hear.
The media is no one's intentional pawn, anyways. There have been times that, personally, I have wished that the media would have kept their collectively large traps shut. You are definately right, though. That alone will never stop the military. If, during the Cold War, no one had ousted the dictatorship there, maybe we wouldn't have as much trouble from them.

Although I fully agree woth the rest of your statements, I believe that the military system could use a little help clearing some of the unneccesary red tape. My family and I recently were shipped to India, and the ammount of paperwork that we had to repeat because it wasn't "current enough" was quite exasperating. The papers themselves had a label saying that they would be good for up to a year. But the personnel recieving said they were only good for six months. This was but a recent example of the many things the military could change if and when they found the time.

As a rule, however, as an organization, I have never been prouder to have served with any better.

Thank you very much for being one of the few voices of reason on this entire page.

[Chuck224]

Hey pythoncharley, I agree wholeheartedly with you, but you have your political parties bass-ackwards. The Dems and their leader think they can invite these idiots to dinner and talk this out with a peaceful ending.

[YCantWeAllGetAlong]

No wonder he is scared. The second video will be of them chopping off his head. They are barbarians and we have no business being there. Let them deal with their own vicious, murdering citizens themselves and bring our soldiers HOME. Congress, sitting in their posh, air-conditioned offices are so far removed from reality that they don't care ONE BIT or they would bring them home now.

[underdogus09]

"Military condemns video of soldier captured in Afghanistan"
just shackle him and waterboard him because Chenney said it's not torture.

[speakinup22]

Much prefered to having your head sawed off.

[warsucks]

How can any of you live with condemning human life like that?!? I'm no pacifist, hell, my motto is something like, "you're free to have your own views, and I'm free to break your nose if I don't like them," but I can't imagine how you can say such things! I know that they kill people. Hell! I live in India! We just had the Jakarta hotel blast! But Seriously! You feel comfortable just killing people off like that?

My parents were both in the military, dad in EOD, so they both did quite a few tours in Iraq. Dad woulda been the most targeted. So I know only too well the feeling that comes with having loved ones in dangerous places. But, in killing, nay, murdering people, even if "they started it" is unequivocally wrong. We are all grown ups here, no? So, maybe, third grader's logic should have stopped applying years ago.

All of you who speak of bombing the place flat have no clue what you would be doing to these people! If we were to drop leaflets warning the innocents to leave, who might also read them? The terrorists, no? Who would have more means to beat a hasty retreat? The terrorist, with their jeeps and such, of the innocents, burdened with their possessions, sick, elderly, CHILDREN? The terrorists would be gone the second the first leaflet found it's way in to their dirty hands.

That also raises the question of where the hell the refugees go. They wouldn't be able to go back for a good while. Which province would they burden? One, the same one as the terrorists most likely; and two, one that probably has alraedy taken in it's share of refugees. So what next? Bomb that place too? There are even more innocents packed in and less escape. But again, the terrorists hightail it out of there! ALL THIS DOES IS KILL THE INNOCENTS! Given, it MAY kill one or two terrorists, but the civilian loss is too high to justify it. How many of you soldiers saw small children die after a car-bomb, RPG, suicide bomber blew up a target? Do you think that just because you can't see them means they couldn't have died?

But I digress.

I hope that this changes your mind and melts some of you posters more stupid bravado. If you so desperately wish to take human life, as advised before, sign yourself up for a tour. See for yourself that they are still people. They just have different ideologies.



"We can learn a lot from crayons. Some are pretty. Some are colorful. But they all live in the same box."



And crayons don't fight.

[speakinup22]

I'll remember that the next time I'm a crayon.

But, I live in a real world.

[longtree-2009]

lets not forget he volunteered. when you volunteer for military service in a fighting unit, there is a good chance of being killed, severely wounded, losing limbs, being captured and tortured, and more. there is no draft and there hasn't been one since the vietnam war. he volunteered.

[differnet]

You think he doesn't know that?!?!? Geesh, he's doing what he needs to do to stay alive long enough for us to hopefully extract him. I love you guys who never once served a day in your life, pontificating on what service personnel know and don't know. He will say whatever he needs to say to stay alive and good on him. His job is to stay alive now. The job of the people who will be assigned to get him out will be to find him. He's doing his job. What the heck is wrong with you people.

[hower4]

At least this soldier's family have been told that he's OK. America doesn't have the humanity to inform the families of those they keep in custody for many years. Usually the first thing the family knows of their missing loved one is when he is released, often as a physically and mentally damaged person, occasionally as a corpse.

[brianbwb-2009]

tO psy_war
I would almost agree with you, except for the fact that America had become that way long before Bush, Remember Reagan's "freedom fighters"? Iran-Iraq? Vietnam? Korea? Cambodia? Japan and Europe?

Just as unprincipled, warmongering, and totalitarian as under Bush, and has been a debtor nation since august 19, 1972. I would posit therefore that America has been this way for quite some time.

You might call it denigration, but history calls it truth.

[speakinup22]

oh, yeah - Hower4 you are so ignorant.


What, this tape was a public service ?

[salmoc44]

Mac,
"It doesnt matter how you do the interrogation. It only matters how you do the verification."

So, it doesn't matter how the Taliban does the interrogation of the U.S. prisoner as long as they think there is information available. And, it only matters how they do the verification. Nice.
Nice.