As has been noted in other Free Republic threads and to be fair to Mr. Spanier, it needs to be highlighted that his wife, Sandra Spanier, is an English professor at Penn State.
"... The video shows a man of the Western type of forty years, man with a moustache and to cranium slightly dismantled, vêtu of a black shirt and presented as being Thomas Hamill, of American nationality. It is filmed on bottom of a large Iraqi flag..."