From this Kansas City Star story:

"The real problem is not Guantánamo Bay," Rumsfeld said. "The problem is that, to a large extent, we are in unexplored territory with this unconventional and complex struggle against extremism. Traditional doctrines covering criminals and military prisoners do not apply well enough."

Well yes, this is true. But if traditional doctrines don't apply, then you need to work to establish new doctrines and guidelines that do. They put these guys in Guantánamo because it is a purposefully ambiguous location, in US control but not officially on US soil. The detainees are not really POWs in the sense that they belong to an organized army that's part of an organized government.

All that doesn't mean that you hold people indefinitely with no due process. It might be tolerable for a couple of months, during which you consult with international legal organizations and entities and try to hammer out a designation for these guys and some basic guidelines for dealing with them. Several years of detention with no legal process is not acceptable.

I honestly don't know whether these guys need to be tried in the US, or tried in the country where they were detained, or tried in their country of origin. Maybe they should be brought before a specially-formed international tribunal. I don't know. But I do know there needs to be some kind of due process. Without it there are no safeguards or assurances that the people down there are being held on legitimate grounds. There's no way to even determine their status.

And that's screwed up. The place needs to be closed.