Who are these guys?

From the day they opened the detainee camp at Guantanamo, it's been hard to get the straight poop on who these guys are. The Bush administration has refused to call them prisoners of war, although sometimes they call them enemy combatants, just not POW's. That allows the U.S. of A. not to treat them in accordance with Geneva conventions and send them to trial in special military tribunals, but now the issue of whether that can be done heads to the Supreme Court.

Now we have Michael Isikoff of Newsweek digging up a tape of a speech Justice Antonin Scalia made March 8 at the University of Freiburg in Switzerland, and Scalia is talking as if these guys are indeed prisoners of war after all.

"War is war, and it has never been the case that when you captured a combatant you have to give them a jury trial in your civil courts. Give me a break," Scalia is quoted by Newsweek as telling a somewhat nonplussed crowd.

So OK, they are prisoners of war, then? and have protections under the Geneva conventions? "If he was captured by my army on a battlefield, that is where he belongs," Scalia said. "I had a son on that battlefield and they were shooting at my son and I'm not about to give this man who was captured in a war a full jury trial. I mean it's crazy."

Scalia's answer didn't address the POW rights question, but it sure sounded to me like he was saying the Gitmo detainees are prisoners of war. Glad that's settled. Or something. Or maybe Isikoff's confusing story needs a clarification - it starts out talking about military tribunals and Scalia seems to be answering a question about civil trials.

Who are these guys anyway? Maybe we'll find out by the time they die of old age in there.