By Matthew Schofield, Kansas City Star editorial columnist

Closing Guantanamo is a no brainer. It has to be done.

Now, how do it, that's a problem.

Earlier this week, I pointed out some problems the British legal and human rights group Reprieve had found with the terror prison in regards to complying with the Geneva Conventions.

Several readers questioned whether or not the Geneva Convention should apply. And that is a central problem with what we're doing at the detention center, isn't it.

The detainees at Guantanamo aren't traditional POWs. In fact, they aren't traditional enemy combatants. They don't fight under the same flag, for a nation.

They can't be held until hostilities cease, because hostilities in "The War on Terror" never really formally began, and won't ever, formally, end.

The men held at Guantanamo are more accurately criminals than prisoners of war.
And that means they have no business in a military prison.

But there are problems with that classification, as well.

Of the approximately 225 detainees left there, a couple dozen can be charged with crimes, meaning we have evidenece that they were involved in actions of plots against the United States.

A couple score are simply being held while we try to find some way to release them.

These folks are in a jailed limbo, we don't necessarily want to hold them, but if we release them to their countries of origin, they'll likely be tortured, so we're slowly farming them out to other nations willing to take them.

And then there's the third group: Men against whom we have no evidence of crimes, or plots for crimes, but who our intelligence agencies are certain, if they are released, will act against the United States.

The way law works today, that's an impossible position, and it's the primary reason we maintain Guatanamo as a detention center.

We don't know what to do about these men. They don't fit as POWs. They don't fit under American criminal law.

Can we hold them, proactively, for crimes they might someday commit?

Not under our laws.

Are they prisoners of war, or enemy combatants? There's no evidence against these men that they've been invovled in battling against the U.S., at least to date.
So, we leave them in Guantanamo while we try to figure out what to do.

We can't legally hold these men inside the United States.

This is a primary reason why the U.S. has such a huge black eye over the detention center, we're purposefully ignoring the rule of law.

The U.S. prides itself on being a nation governed by the rule of law. It's a basis for the notion that all men are created equal.

When we sell democracy around the world, we're really selling the rule of law, the notion that no individual or group should be given higher or lower regard under law. A nation works best when all people are regarded equally.

We believe in this. It's part of who we are.
We use these phrases in Iraq and Afghanistan, whereever we work.

Those who oppose us, of course, look to counter our arguements abroad, they try to sell the idea that we don't trully believe in equality. The argument is that we're, in the end, simply the latest colonialists on the block.

And when they use the example of Guantanamo, they find traction. These days, they're finding a lot of traction.

Guantanamo isn't merely Guantanamo in this context, it's a shorthand, for Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, for the problems at the Baghram detention center, for extraordinary renditions.

It's tough for those who defend us, and what we stand for, to defend that place.

So close it. The way forward, however, requires a lot more than simply locking the doors.

Congress has to address the status of those both un-charged and un-chargeable under current law. Can we afford to simply release these men?

It requires a new set of laws to deal with. by it's nature, law enforcement is reactive, and these are proactive problems. We need these laws. And, unless we believe that the war on terror has ended, they should be given a high priority.

I favor the relocation of this prison to the U.S., and I'm intrigued by the current Obama plan. A separate terror prison is required for these men. Placing that prison on a military installation is a very smart idea, as is the idea of placing it far from our borders as possible.

Most of all, it's essential to make it a self-contained unit. It needs to house a cout that deals specifically with terrorism. The French have a similar system, and they have laws that are much tougher on terrorism than most nations.

The judge running that court has wide-ranging powers, to conduct inquiries, to indict, to direct investigations.

It's an entirely new path for the U.S., but this is an entirely new area of law.

At this point, Guantanamo is a discussion. The answers aren't entirely formed. But one goal has to remain: It has to close, and soon.