What would happen if we just called them “Prisoners of War” instead of “detainees” ,, I never saw the reason for being cute with the terminology ... POW’s have always been held for the duration of a conflict and have never had rights to a lawyer....even when held on US soil as many German prisoners were in the southern US.
I guess that is because, technically, we are not at War. Congress — the lawmakers — never did a formal declaration, only an authorization of the use of force. We’ve been fudging the status of the ‘detainees’ since the beginning.