The disclaimer covering intellectual property is a serious legal stretch. He will smoke the Army in any Federal court on this one. And the idea that him handing it out to some soldier represented an effective public domain of his work is laughable. Yon will have to start beating every single outlet he can find with the photo including Google. If you do not act to protect your copyrighted works, you are deemed to have given up your rights.
I think this is also quite a stretch to claim that this element of the release carries over to violation of his legal rights of copyright, etc..