[poet]

I'm really confused now. If what they did to the towers in NY was an act of war as has been stated time and time again, how can they not be POWs if they were captured in a massive military operation? What does "illegal combatants mean?

[JohnHuang2]

The attacks of September 11 were acts of war, clearly, but al-Qaeda is a terrorist organization, not a nation-state, hense captured combatants, adhering to the strictist definition, are not POWs.