I stand by the first statement. The privileges accorded POWs were provided to most prisoners long before 2006. The Red Cross has had access to Guantanamo and Bagram since January of 2002, and to the 15 previously-secret high-level prisoners since October of 2006.

Incidentally, this is the Red Cross statement on the use of their confidential reports as political weapons.

A number of things have happened in this discussion.

First, we have now apparently redefined "torture" as anything at all--anything--that makes a prisoner either physically or mentally uncomfortable.

You okay with that?

Second, with absolutely no wartime precedent, we have apparently decided that enemy combatants in a time of war will be treated in exactly the same way as an American citizen brought to justice for violating U.S. statutes. Prisoners that have, themselves, violated every rule of war. Public trials, free defense provided, and all the P.R. you can stand and the defense attorneys could want.

O.J. multiplied by 100.

You okay with that, too?

Go for it. Close Guanatamo, and put them in specially-constructed isolated prisons in the U.S. Certainly we can't put them in with a normal prison population.

Generate hundreds of trials, each of which will go on for years of appeals and countless newspaper headlines. Maybe some of the prisoners will sell book rights.