Should guantanamo bay detainees recieve protection from the Geneva Convention and Constitution

Should the Guantanamo detainees be given constitutional rights? I believe so. Should they receive protection under the Geneva convention? I also believe that they should. My first argument is that our constitution was created to preserve the rights of American citizens from abuses and ensure our protection from our government. It is true that our constitution was created specifically with American citizens in mind, however that should not be an issue. All of us humans are the same, Americans or not, and we deserve the same and equal treatments and rights. I see no reason why Americans should be more privileged than illegal combatants from another country. My first argument is based on the spirit of America. We, as Americans, pride ourselves as being the better compared to other countries. If this is true, then should we not take the higher ground? We should. We should give everyone a fair trial, because we are America and we should be a fair country. My second argument is based on the spirit of the law. If we hold a prisoner without a trial for as long as we desire, then what is the point? With a trial, we dig up evidence against them and fairly prosecute them and sentence them. If we believe that they might have done something wrong, but the evidence is lacking, then they should be locked up in the first place. If we have strong evidence, we should be afraid of trying them in a court of law. There is always a risk that we might let someone free who is guilty, who might do more harm in the future. This is always a risk, however in my opinion it is much worse if we imprison one man who is innocent. As the saying goes: Its better that 10 guilty men go free than 1 innocent man be imprisoned. My third argument is based on international perceptions. The U.S. is severely lacking in international clout. We are considered to be the "watch dogs" of the world, and all of the military scandals in the past few years have done much harm to our perception internationally. If we imprison people, innocent and guilty, without trial for indefinite periods of time then it can only do harm to our international perceptions. My last argument is based on science. The Geneva convention protects prisoners against torture. Torture is a barbaric technique used for thousands of years, but scientifically it is not sound. The only reasonable cause we could ever have for torturing suspects would be to get information out of them. However, scientific studies have proven that torture itself is a useless technique for getting information. http://www.newswise.com... In summary, We should treat others as we would treat our own citizens. We should not imprison people unless we have just cause, and we should always give them a fair trial. If our evidence is lacking, and we are afraid of a trial, we probably should have them in prison to begin with. It is worse to imprison one innocent man than it is to let many guilty men go free, and in a system where there are no trials or rules of evidence then this is a big risk. Also, if we do this incorrectly we are risking international scorn, and in a globalized world we can not afford any more animosity form the international community.