BAGHDAD - A missing Iraqi-American contractor was kidnapped by Shiite militiamen who lured him into central Baghdad by promising to help him find distant relatives, an Iraqi defense official said Saturday.

A Shiite extremist group claimed responsibility for the Jan. 23 kidnapping and posted a video online that shows a man wearing military fatigues reading a list of demands that includes the release of militants, the prosecution of Blackwater guards and an immediate American troop withdrawal.

A high-ranking Iraqi defense official and an American intelligence official identified the man in the video as Issa T. Salomi, the missing contractor. Both spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to release the information.

The Iraqi defense official said Salomi was abducted in the central Baghdad district of Karradah. He said Salomi is of Iraqi origin and that his abductors led him to believe they would help him find family members.

Salomi, 60, of El Cajon, California, has been missing since Jan. 23, the Pentagon said in a statement late Friday that provided the first news of Salomi's disappearance.

A U.S. intelligence official said initial investigations indicated Salomi was abducted by criminals for revenge or money - and not as part of a terrorism scheme.

Salomi was abducted when he was leaving his home in Baghdad, where he has relatives, the official said.

In the video, Salomi - who did not identify himself - is seated in a chair and wearing what looks like a U.S. military uniform. A black banner with the name of the militant group - the League of the Righteous, also known by its Arabic name, Asaib Ahl al-Haq - written in white Arabic script hangs behind him.

Salomi says his abductors are demanding the release of militants "that resisted the occupation."

"The second demand is to bring the proper justice and the proper punishment to those members of Blackwater company that have committed unjustifiable crimes against innocent Iraqi civilians," he said. "And to bring justice by proper compensation to the families that have been involved in great suffering because of this incident."

Blackwater security contractors were protecting U.S. diplomats when the guards opened fire in Nisoor Square, a crowded Baghdad intersection, on Sept. 16, 2007. Seventeen people were killed, including women and children, in a shooting that inflamed anti-American sentiment in Iraq.

Vice President Joe Biden has said the U.S. plans to appeal a court decision dismissing manslaughter charges against the five Blackwater guards involved in the shooting.

Salomi's family issued a statement, released through the FBI in San Diego, saying they were hoping for his safe return. The statement did not say whether Salomi was believed abducted.

"We are confident that everything is being done by the most capable people here and abroad to bring Issa home safely, and we all are anxiously awaiting his safe return," the statement said.

The same group that claimed to have kidnapped Salomi was believed to be behind the kidnapping of British computer consultant Peter Moore in May 2007 along with his four British bodyguards. Moore was handed over to Iraqi authorities in late December. Three of the bodyguards were killed and the fourth is believed dead.

The British government has said no deals were struck for Moore's release, though it coincided with the transfer of the militant group's leader, Qais al-Khazali, from U.S. to Iraqi custody.

Al-Khazali and his brother were accused of organizing an attack on a local government headquarters in the city of Karbala that killed five U.S. soldiers on Jan. 20, 2007. 

RAMADI, Iraq - The U.S. Marine Corps wrapped nearly seven years in Iraq on Saturday, handing over duties to the Army and signaling the beginning of an accelerated withdrawal of American troops as the U.S. turns its focus away from the waning Iraqi war to a growing one in Afghanistan.

In Baghdad, meanwhile, Vice President Joe Biden held talks with Iraqi leaders amid growing tensions over plans to ban election candidates because of suspected links to Saddam Hussein's regime.

The White House worries the bans could raise questions over the fairness of the March 7 parliamentary elections, which are seen as an important step in the American pullout timetable.

The Marines formally handed over control of Sunni-dominated Anbar, Iraq's largest province, to the Army during a ceremony at a base in Ramadi - where some of the fiercest fighting of the war took place.

If all goes as planned, the last remaining Marines will be followed out by tens of thousands of soldiers in the coming months. President Barack Obama has ordered all but 50,000 troops out of the country by Aug. 31, 2010, with most to depart after the March 7 parliamentary election.

The remaining troops will leave by the end of 2011 under a U.S.-Iraqi security pact.

But concerns about the success of the election - and perhaps the loss of hard won security gains that the Marines helped cement - are on the rise because of a growing political dispute that could see more than 500 candidates blacklisted because of suspected ties to previous regime.

The changeover at Ramadi, west of Baghdad, leaves the U.S. Army's 1st Armored Division with responsibility over both Baghdad and Anbar, the vast desert province that stretches from western Baghdad to the borders of Syria, Jordan and Saudi Arabia.

The province was once the heart of the deadly Sunni insurgency that erupted after the U.S.-led invasion in 2003. In the battles for control of the cities of Fallujah and Ramadi, the Marines saw some of the most brutal and deadliest fighting of the war.

Violence began dropping off in the province in late 2006 when Sunni fighters - known as Awakening Councils - turned against al-Qaida and sided with the Marines to fight the insurgency.

As many as 25,000 Marines were in Iraq at the peak, mostly in Anbar province. The few thousand who remain - except for U.S. Embassy guards and advisers in Baghdad - are expected to ship out in a matter of weeks.

The upcoming parliamentary election is also considered an important step toward speeding the U.S. troop pullout. But plans to ban hundreds of candidates have raised deep concerns in Washington that the voting could widen rifts between the majority Shiites who gained power after Saddam's fall and Sunnis who are struggling to regain influence.

Biden, who arrived late Friday, had a full agenda of meetings with Iraqi leaders including Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, who has strongly supported the blacklist.

Some Sunni leaders have accused the Shiite-led government of using the ban as a political tool. But al-Maliki insists that Iraq must purge all ties to Saddam's Sunni-dominated regime. A vetting panel has put 512 names on the blacklist and more are expected.

Six Marines are credited with saving the lives of countless comrades and securing an American victory during the World War II Battle of Iwo Jima. These six, part of 29 original Navajo code talkers, decoded more than 800 coded messages during the first 48 hours of the battle.

The Inspiration:

Early in 1942, Philip Johnson, the child of missionaries on a Navajo reservation, a World War I veteran and a fluent speaker of Navajo, met with Maj. Gen. Clayton B. Vogel, the commanding general of Amphibious Corps, Pacific Fleet, to pitch the idea of developing an unbreakable code using the Navajo language for use during World War II, according to a report on the subject, available on the Central Intelligence Agency’s Web site.

Johnson pointed out the language, which is unwritten and contains variations in syntax, dialect and tonal qualities, would be indecipherable to someone who didn’t know the language.

Johnson also showed Vogel it was possible to send and decode a coded message in about 20 seconds, whereas the then current method of sending and decoding took about 30 minutes. Vogel went for it.

The First Steps:

The 29 Navajos recruited as the initial code talkers arrived at Camp Elliot, located near San Diego, after recruit training to put together a new code. The code was made more complex with the inclusion of a word substitution system, according to the Web site.

“For us, everything is memory. It’s part of our heritage,” said Carl Gorman, one of the original 29 code talkers, when asked why Navajos were able to memorize the code as quickly as they did, as stated in Marine Administrative Message 0634/09, which recognizes November as National Native American Heritage Month. “We have no written language. Our songs, our prayers, our stories - they’re all handed down from grandfather to children and we listen, we hear, we learn to remember everything.”

The Code:

Once each line of code was translated into English, the Marines pieced together the whole message using only the first letter of each of the translated words. To spell “Army,” a code talker might send “wol-la-chee (ant) gah (rabbit) na-as-tso-si (mouse) tsah-as-zih (yucca),” according to the Navajo code talker’s dictionary, available on www.history.navy.mil.

Each letter had several words associated with it. “A” was represented by “wol-la-chee (ant),” “be-la-sana (apple)” and “tse-nill (axe).” There was also a specialized list of words to represent common military terms, as listed in the dictionary. For example, the code word for “battleship” is “lo-tso,” literally translated as whale.

The dictionary, which originally contained 211 words, included 411 by the war end, according to the CIA Web site.

The Impact:

At first, some military leaders were skeptical about the new system. According to the CIA’s report, the code talkers were tested before being trusted with combat related messages. They proved themselves by sending, receiving and decoding the messages in record time and without error.

“Were it not for the Navajos, the Marines would never have taken Iwo Jima,” said then Maj. Howard Connor, the signal officer for 5th Marine Division at the Battle of Iwo Jima, according to www.navajo.org. Navajo code talkers were a key component of many of the major battles in the Pacific, including Guadalcanal, Tarawa and Peleliu.

The Recognition:

The world wouldn’t know the part Navajo code talkers played until 1968, when the code was declassified. In 1982, former President Ronald Reagan dubbed Aug. 14 “Navajo Code Talkers Day.”

Their story and the contributions of Native Americans across the nation are also remembered during each National Native American Heritage Month.

“This month, we celebrate the ancestry and time honored traditions of American Indians and Alaska Natives in North America. They have guided our land stewardship policies, added immeasurably to our cultural heritage and demonstrated courage in the face of adversity,” said President Barack Obama in a proclamation officially naming this month as National Native American Heritage Month 2009.

The Legacy Upheld:

Today, there are 2,409 Native Americans serving as active duty Marines and 1,508 Native Americans serving in the Marine Corps Reserve, according to Headquarters Marine Corps. So far, 5,509 active duty and reserve Native American Marines have served in Operations Iraqi Freedom and Enduring Freedom.

The Fighting Griffins of Marine Medium Tiltrotor Squadron 266 have found themselves on top as they were recently recognized as the Marine Corps Aviation Association’s 2009 tiltrotor squadron of the year.

The Fred McCorkle Tiltrotor Squadron of the Year Award, which was presented to the squadron in October during the Marine Corps Aviation Association’s annual symposium at the Grand Sierra Resort in Reno, Nev., spotlights their accomplishments and meritorious service in support of II Marine Expeditionary Force from May 2008 through April 2009.

“The Fighting Griffins of VMM-266 set the standard for others to emulate by providing assault support to both the Fleet Marine Force while in (contiguous United States) and to Multi-National Coalition Forces while deployed to Iraq,” as stated in the award citation.

“From flawless execution of pre-deployment training, evaluation and certification during Desert Talon, to the successful execution of sustained combat operations in Al Asad, Iraq, VMM-266 raised the bar for Marine aviation.”

During their deployment in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom, VMM-266 successfully produced the highest number of MV-22B flight hours during the annual reporting period.

During Operation Iraqi Freedom, this effort resulted in the safe completion of more than 2,366 sorties, an estimated 3,550 mishap-free flight hours while safely transporting an approximate 17,599 assault support request passengers and more than 553,661 pounds of cargo.

According to the citation, the squadron’s extensive contributions significantly enhanced the war fighting capability of the individual Marine and the Marine air ground task force, and made tiltrotor aviation a fully integrated reality for the United States Marine Corps.

The squadron was the third and final Osprey squadron to deploy to Iraq. After being there for nearly six months, VMM-266 returned to New River with all 12 of the aircraft used for the three deployments.

“It is a testament to the dedication and hard work of the Marines that call themselves the Fighting Griffins,” said Lt. Col. Romin Dasmalchi, VMM-266 commanding officer. “They are the ones responsible for building this squadron up and making it what it is today.

“It is their hard work and determination to get the job done that has transformed this squadron into a top-notch support squadron,” he said.