From the description at LiveLeak: The clip was shown to McClatchy Newspapers in Baghdad on Tuesday night on condition that the provider’s name and other identifying details be withheld for security reasons. The provider said the video was shot in response to a demand for proof that the men were alive before negotiations for their release could begin. The provider was confident that the men are still living and remain in the hands of a little-known Shiite Muslim militant group that calls itself the “Mujahedeen of Jerusalem Company.” Representatives of the U.S. military, the American Embassy and the men’s employer, the Kuwait-based Crescent Security Group, said they hadn’t known of the video and called it the first significant development since the kidnapping. In the video, which runs for one and a half minutes, each of the men repeats the same presumably scripted demand: that American forces withdraw from Iraq. None of the captors appears in the video, and no ransom demand, explicit threat or deadline is given. Three of the hostages are shown together, while the other two appear in separate shots that may have been taken elsewhere.

The families who are inquiring about their loved ones are getting threatened with reprisals for just asking. Nice. Don’t they have the right to know what’s going on? If there has been word? Progress? Anything? God bless all of their families as they cling to fading hopes.