You guys keep bringing up this "formal declaration" yet nowhere in the Constitution is such a thing required.
"W" went out with a Congressional authoriation to do all the nastiness he needed to do.
I'd like to agree but this conflating of "war" and "criminal act" is the thing I was worried about back in Sept. 2001.
Unlawful combatants and spies in a declared war do not get 3 squares, flat screen TV, and ping pong. They do not get refugee visas. They do not get released into family neighborhoods in Virginia to compensate for their grievances.
They get a military hearing followed by a firing squad or hanging.
We'll be lucky indeed if our ACLU-infested civilian criminal justice system sends Kahlid Sheik Mohammad to a cement room at the Florence ADX Supermax with his nephew Ramsi Yousef.