Lucky for us, in warfare we do not have to grant the enemy the assumption of innocence before guilt is proven. Of course, you don't have to take my word for anything. I don't think anyone is arguing that the detainees captured in the midst of terrorist activities are "great guys". Far from the truth. Where my fundamental disagreement with others is their insistence on seeing these people as the equivalent to a citizen captured for petty larceny at WalMart. They are not the same. They aren't citizens, they aren't soldiers, they demand protection under the Geneva conventions which specifically excludes them from its protections but then when it suits them (e.g. they don't want to wait until the end of hostilities to be tried or released) they want to be treated as U.S. citizens and given a media heavy U.S. trial by the same people they are sworn to destroy on the very soil of their target country, rather than the military trial granted to POW's found guilty of a crime. If they are to have a civilian trial, I feel the jurisdiction belongs to the country in which their crimes took place or the country of their victims. If Achmel Fayad is detained because he is known to be the mastermind of the Al Qaeda cell in Talil, for instance, if it is unacceptable (illegal! some would scream) to keep him in captivity to find out who his group was going to murder next and when/how, then I'm sure he would have a nice trial in Talil at the hands of the Iraqis, who no doubt have not forgotten the decapitated bodies floating down the Tigris that many here in the U.S. seem to forget too easily. Wonder how long he would last.
If one would claim we have no right to detain these people, then such is tantamount to admitting the detainees are NOT EPWs. It also follows, that if it is claimed we cannot detain such people, we also would therefore have no authority to TRY them, either. Back to Afghanistan, or Iraq, or wherever, to face trial. That goes for the Americans and British and other America haters that enlisted and bore arms against us for Al Qaeda. They get tried over there too. They have forfeited their rights as citizens here, simply by bearing arms against there own country.
Seems fair to me, anyway. I see no reason to keep people we can't try and who we can't get information from to save innocents because it *might* violate some right or other that an American lawyer thinks they have.
John P.