TO DATE, THE BUSH administration's handling of the war has been superb. Its handling of the law of war has not. From the president's November 13 Military Order--calling for trial by military commission of certain non-citizens accused of terrorist activities--to the current dispute over the legal status of detainees at Guantanamo, the administration has drawn sustained criticism from civil rights and humanitarian organizations for its handling, proposed or actual, of those caught in the terrorist net the U.S. military has so effectively spread.

There is a sense in which humanitarian and civil rights groups exist in order not to be satisfied. And the administration's supporters, of whom there are many, have risen to denounce the attackers. But while the ACLU and Human Rights Watch are never going to be friends of the Bush team, their animus doesn't automatically make their legal arguments specious. As it happens, the administration has made a telling moral and political argument that the al Qaeda and Taliban detainees in Cuba are receiving the treatment they deserve. But legally, while it may have a plausible argument, the administration hasn't bothered to make it.

What does the Justice Department have to say about the detainees and their status under U.S. treaty law and so-called customary international law? Justice's Office of Legal Counsel is in charge of providing authoritative answers to the U.S. government on legal questions. A department spokesman told me OLC has opined on the matter, but the department refuses to release the memorandum or discuss its contents. To be sure, many OLC memoranda never get published. But the last one posted on the Justice Department website on any subject is from September 2000, i.e., during the Clinton administration. And the question of the legal status of the detainees is, after all, a matter of some public interest. Why the secrecy? Law isn't spycraft.

The essential substantive question is whether the detainees in Cuba merit the status of "prisoners of war" under the provisions of the third Geneva Convention of 1949. The administration says absolutely not, there is no doubt whatsoever that they do not qualify for prisoner status and are, instead, "unlawful combatants." The certitude the administration has expressed is of critical importance, because in case of "any doubt," according to Article 5 of the convention, the detainees are entitled to a finding on the question by a "competent tribunal" as well as to be treated as POWs until that finding is made. The U.S. government isn't convening any such tribunals.

Whence comes the certitude? It's hard to know with, well, certainty, given the secrecy of the legal briefs, but comments by administration officials suggest that the detainees are members of organizations--al Qaeda and the Taliban--that the administration does not regard as armed forces for purposes of the treaty. Nor do they meet the Article 4 criteria for granting POW protections to members of militias and volunteer corps, namely: "(a) that of being commanded by a person responsible for his subordinates; (b) that of having a fixed distinctive sign recognizable at a distance; (c) that of carrying arms openly; (d) that of conducting their operations in accordance with the laws and customs of war."
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