Quote Originally Posted by JJackson View Post
why are they illegal anything?
Dunno; their choice and I long ago stopped trying to figure motives in people...
If some AQ were moving through the area and thought my house was a good place for an ambush and the US troops found me cowering under my bed - assuming they did not shoot me on the spot - I would presumably spend the next decade trying to convince some GITMO guard I had not planned 9/11.
Only if you had a particularly poor batch of US Troops find you; most exercise some discrimination and if they err, tend to err on giving your story the benefit of the doubt. That is to say far more bad guys talk their way out of a bad spot then are wrongly caught.
If I declare Ken a non combatant can I lock him up indefinitely? We disagree from time to time but I am not sure that would be very fair.
Well, you could, I guess but I don't know why you'd lock up a non combatant; we try to avoid that, mostly successfully and concentrate on locking up combatants -- the issue du jour being whether they are 'illegal' or legal combatants.

That involves the Geneva Convention and those provisions that state aside from combatants (pictured as military force against military force; out of date but there it is), other individuals, including civilians, who commit hostile acts and are captured do not have the protections of the GC. Rightly or wrongly, the US decided to label people in that category 'illegal combatants.' Gives the Lawyers something to do...