Due process: Guantanamo detainees should be released

https://www.cincinnati.com/story/opinion/2018/08/26/due-process-guantanamo-detainees-should-released/ [login to see] /
What you all seem to fail to understand (or even admit knowing about) is that all of the detainees who have gone through or remain at the US military detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, are at least unlawful combatants. They were not apprehended jaywalking across a US boulevard, they were apprehended after a nebulous group of bloodthirsty enemies attacked and murdered thousands of innocent people. The Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF) was signed and re-signed which gave the US legal authorization to apprehend and interrogate suspected or know enemy combatants (aka unlawful combatants). Unlawful because in no way, shape or form do our enemies comply with the Geneva Conventions or Law of War. This status provides ZERO rights under the law. Only Donald Rumsfeld's statement at the start of the detention mission, that we would treat detainees "within the spirit of Geneva" gave them a modicum of legal standing. That became the basis for the Military Commissions Act of 2006, later to be deemed unconstitutional by the US Supreme Court. The USSC also ruled that detainees may apply for habeas corpus. The modified MCA of 2009, by the Obama administration, gives detainees virtually the same rights you or I would enjoy in a Federal court of law. You want due process? The unlawful combatant Islamists who want to kill us have not EARNED due process. In fact, Geneva and the Law of War state that even lawful combatant POW's may be held without charge or trial "until the end of hostilities." Although many detainees were released prior to 2008, those released after 2008 were among the worst of the worst, including close associates and leaders of Usama bin Laden and al Qaeda, respectively. At least 30 percent of those released detainees are known or suspected to have returned to the fight, including the mastermind of the Benghazi attacks that left four Americans dead, including a US ambassador. Your bellyaching over due process is intellectually dishonest at best and treasonous at worst. Sincerely, Montgomery J. Granger, Major, US Army, Retired; former ranking US Army Medical Department officer with the Joint Detainee Operations Group, Joint Task Force 160, Guantanamo Bay, Cuba; and author: "Saving Grace at Guantanamo Bay: A Memoir of a Citizen Warrior."