Al Qaeda issues video of U.S. pilot killed in crash

DUBAI (Reuters) - An al Qaeda-led group in Iraq appealed to Americans on Thursday to reject the policies of President George W. Bush and issued a video apparently showing the remains of a U.S. pilot killed in a crash last year.

The video posted on the Internet by the media arm of the Islamic State in Iraq showed the body of a dead man in a flight suit wearing a parachute harness and lying in an open area.

"O people of America, Iraq has taken many of your soldiers and Bush is the cause of this," said an off-camera insurgent on the video, which also included footage of Iraqi children it said were killed in a U.S. air strike.

The video also showed an Air Force ID card bearing the name of Troy Gilbert, a U.S. pilot whose plane crashed in November 2006. Originally listed as missing, he was declared dead based on human remains found at the site of the crash, according to a U.S. military Web site.

"It is your president (who is responsible). The one who deceived you regarding the war in Iraq. And his deception continues," the insurgent said on the video, issued shortly before a major speech by Bush on his Iraq policies.

The video, which unlike similar Web postings had English subtitles, included an audio clip from al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden which was believed to be old, the U.S. terrorism monitoring firm IntelCenter said.

It also contained video of Abu Yahya al-Libi, an al Qaeda commander who escaped from a U.S. prison in Afghanistan in 2005, and audio of Omar al-Baghdadi, leader of the self-styled Islamic State in Iraq, IntelCenter said.

A U.S. military spokesman in Iraq said earlier that he had no immediate information.

The authenticity of the video, a compilation of insurgent themes produced by media arm Al Furqaan, could not be confirmed. It was posted on a main Islamist Web site.

The footage of the body had similarities with a video of the crash site taken by a local journalist and issued just after the crash northwest of Baghdad, but it appeared to have been taken hours later when it was getting dark.

The Islamic State in Iraq, a group formed last year by al Qaeda's wing in Iraq and other Sunni insurgents, has claimed responsibility for mass kidnappings and a series of major attacks.

(Additional reporting by Dominic Evans in Baghdad)