Here's something interesting spoken by an Israeli judge on why a senior Palestinian official can't be held as prisoner of war:

"Terror is not an act of war, and therefore it doesn't fall within the rules of war."

This is what I was thinking the moment Resident Shrub called the 9/11 attacks "an act of war." That wasn't war, it was terrorism. Calling it an act of war validates it to a certain extent, and excuses the perpetrators from responsibility for their actions. The only reason we're at "war" right now is to line the pockets of the super-rich oil- and weapons barons who currently have a stranglehold over our nation's policy makers, our money, our media, and our conscience. Calling an act of terrorism an act of war reduces the vileness of the act and gives the terrorists an amount of defensibility that it doesn't deserve.