Don't know about the rest of the article, but the first time I heard that statement I thought, that ain't gonna fly, and if Rumsfeld doesn't back off of that, it is gonna bite us in the a$$ down the road.
According them POW status carries with it the considerable, and odious, freight of according terrorist NGO's statal status and the right to levy war. Soldiers' POW status recognizes their legal status on the battlefield as duly appointed representatives of their governments. NGO's have no right to levy war, and their goons have no right to the status of a lawful combatant.
Consider further: if the lefties at the Guardian were considering instead the right of the Michigan Militia to undertake international military ops on behalf of a plausibly denying government somewhere, where do you think the Guardian would come down on that issue?
This is another case of an internationalist Leftie sending out the call to his buds in the various international agencies to begin playing "Mother May I?" with the United States. His objective is to deny the United States the right, and the practical ability, to obtain direct satisfaction from its assailants. Instead, we must go crawling to the one-worlder agencies and their toadies and hangers-on to beg for justice, as if our ancestors never provided us both a Navy and a Marine Corps to vindicate us.
That is the game that is afoot now with the Left.
What are they going to do, crash planes into the World Trade Center?