The whole thing is just sad, and hopefully the violence will soon end... he'll be home, as will all the young men fighting in the region.
With that said, this sort of exploitation is crude. Our pilots in Vietnam were brutally tortured and imprisoned for several years, and were also exploited like this young man. I still remember American pilots on the news, speaking like robotic drones:
"Yes, I am an American Air Pirate. I drop bombs and Napalm on the innocent and peace-loving women and children of the Glorious Vietnamese nation. I fully renounce everything the U.S. is doing in Vietnam. blah blah." But these "confessions" were only extracted after prolonged torture and abuse.
Often, they would sign these confessions with signatures like "Donald E. Duck" or "Mickey Mouse." The confessions would be shown in public, and the subsequent beatings, when the trick was discovered, were severe.
One clever pilot,
Jeremiah Denton, was able to use his eyes to blink out the word
T O R T U R E in morse code while he was giving his confession. Here's a video of it. Brilliantly done.
We were well-trained to resist this sort of thing. The Code of Conduct outlines what is expected of us as a prisoner. You are required to resist to the best of your ability, but what SEA taught us was that all humans will eventually crack under torture. It is impossible to resist. Books and movies that show a man being tortured to death rather than reveal a secret are fictitious. You will reach a point where you will say or do anything to make it stop.