US Soldier in Taliban Video Updated & Bumped

Midnight Rider updates: Soldiers Identity Confirmed

MSNBC

Idaho town prays for captured soldier’s return
Neighbors have known for weeks that soldier was being held captive

HAILEY, Idaho - Friends and family of an Idaho soldier who was captured in Afghanistan prayed for his safe return Sunday, shaken by the image of the frightened young private in a Taliban video posted online.

Pfc. Bowe R. Bergdahl, 23, was serving with an Alaska-based infantry regiment earlier this month when he vanished, just five months after arriving in Afghanistan. He was serving at a base near the border with Pakistan in an area known to be a Taliban stronghold.

Bergdahl is from Hailey, a town of about 7,000 people in central Idaho where he worked as a barista and was active in ballet. A sign hangs in the window of Zaney's River Street Coffee House says "Get Bowe Back," and a message inside asked customers to "Join all of us at Zaney's holding light for our friend."

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This video frame grab taken from a Taliban propaganda video released Saturday, July 18, 2009 shows an American soldier who went missing from his base in eastern Afghanistan June 30 and was later confirmed captured. The soldier, whose identity has not yet been confirmed 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. (AP Photo/Militant Video)

US Soldier in Taliban video:

WASHINGTON – 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 said.

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.

This comes on the heels of Sec. of Defense, Robert Gates, realizing & acknowledging that our efforts and military results in that nation must improve soon:

Reporting from Washington -- After eight years, U.S.-led forces must show progress in Afghanistan by next summer to avoid the public perception that the conflict has become unwinnable, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said in a sharp critique of the war effort.

Gates said that victory was a "long-term prospect" under any scenario and that the U.S. would not win the war in a year's time. However, U.S. forces must begin to turn the situation around in a year, he said, or face the likely loss of public support.

"After the Iraq experience, nobody is prepared to have a long slog where it is not apparent we are making headway," Gates said an in interview. "The troops are tired; the American people are pretty tired."

Deep public unhappiness with the war in Iraq helped sink President George W. Bush's approval ratings, making him the most unpopular president in recent history, according to some surveys.

While not predicting a parallel fate for the Obama administration, Gates emphasized the need for progress in Afghanistan during an interview aboard his plane as he returned to Washington after visiting sailors Friday at the Great Lakes Naval Station in Illinois.


Gates has spoken about the need for progress in Afghanistan and the public's fatigue of war. But in this interview, he went further by offering a more specific time frame for needed progress as well as the consequences of failing to meet it.

Gates has overseen an overhaul in the administration's Afghanistan strategy in recent months, sending 21,000 additional troops and choosing a new commander to lead the international effort.

"This is where we are really getting back into the fight," Gates said.

The strategy switch came after extremist attacks rose dramatically last year and U.S. and NATO troop casualties surpassed record levels. A U.S. fighter jet crashed today, killing the two crew members and bringing the number of Western deaths in Afghanistan to at least 50 in July, the deadliest month yet.

President Obama said last week that he hoped to "transition to a different phase" after the Afghan presidential election Aug. 20.

During the 2007 buildup of U.S. troops in Iraq, military leaders often mentioned the importance of adding time to "the Washington clock" to give their strategy a chance to work.

Gates said that Americans would have the patience to continue the war in Afghanistan only if the new military approach began to move the conflict out of deadlock.

"If we can show progress, and we are headed in the right direction, and we are not in a stalemate where we are taking significant casualties, then you can put more time on the Washington clock," he said.

Gates, whom Bush named Defense secretary in 2006, said he acted as soon as he could to overhaul the Afghanistan effort but was limited by the troop buildup in Iraq.

"Within the framework of the surge . . . what I did in Afghanistan was about all I could do with the forces we had available."

With the new troop strategy in place, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, and Gen. David H. Petraeus, head of U.S. forces in the Mideast, are due to provide their assessment of the U.S.-led effort in Afghanistan early next month.

Gates said the commanders were free to provide an honest assessment, but also cautioned that additional troops might not be approved.

"I did not want either of them to feel constrained in making their recommendations," Gates said. "That is not to say we will accept all of their recommendations."

The war in Afghanistan officially is a NATO mission. Gates said the alliance is facing the challenge of rising casualties just as the overall coalition war effort is beginning to function better. Fifteen British troops were killed in action in Afghanistan this month, and Canada has lost five of its service members.

"There has been an extraordinary amount of political courage as some of our partners have taken some really devastating causalities," Gates said. "The British have had a rough couple of weeks."

Gates is also locked in a budget fight with Congress over his drive to halt further production of the F-22 fighter jet, cancel a new presidential helicopter and push more money into programs closely related to ongoing U.S. combat missions, like unmanned aerial drones.

As House and Senate committees have supported more money for the F-22, the helicopter and other programs, Gates has objected and the White House has threatened a veto if those funds are not cut. In an address last week in Chicago, Gates delivered his toughest comments yet on the budget, attacking the funding for F-22s as a "business as usual" approach that will siphon money from more important programs.

But in the interview, Gates adopted a more cordial tone, noting that Congress had agreed to most of the dozens of spending shifts he recommended.

"We are only focused on three or four now. They happen to be pretty important ones, but there has been a fair amount of buy-in," Gates said.

Gates has generally good relations with Congress and described budget negotiations as respectful.

"They know where I am coming from and I know what their concerns are," Gates said. "There is no questioning of anyone's motives here. It is figuring out the right direction."