But that's the point. There's no reason for us to believe that these people are combatants at all other than by taking the word of our administration, who have demonstrated themselves to be untrustworthy.

You don't trust them, I do. Fair enough. Maybe I'm too trustworthy, I don't know. I remember specifically hearing about a plot to crash airlines into the World Trade Center and the White House in the early months of 2001 (during an interview with someone about the first Trade Center plot) and I said to myself, "well, Clinton is a goof-ball, but I'm sure he and the people we has working under him are on top of this. We probably have counter measures in place to stop this that I'll be reading about in 15 years." So when I woke up on 9/11/01 to the view of two towers burning, my reaction was "NO SHIT! They TOLD us there were going to do this!!" So call me naive I guess... But at least I don't just trust the people I vote for.

All I'm suggesting is that we truly determine whether they're supposed to be there and then treat the ones that really are in accordance with the Geneva Convention, regardless of whether they were illegal combatants or not.

I agree that this would be best IF the Geneva convention had some provision that allowed for a situation like that one we are in now. It is not within the scope of the Geneva Convention to have a war between a state and an organization in an ongoing war. The Convention will simply call for the combatants to be released yesterday despite the fact that they have not declared an end to their battle against us.

You're right, we are interpreting things so that they best suit our interests. But those interests are the self-preservation of our country and its citizens. We aren't doing this to throw our weight around or get sweet business deals, that's what leaders in France do.