Justifying Illegal Detentions

Apparently the State Department produced a report for the UN investigation of U.S. detention facilities at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba and in Iraq and Afghanistan. Reuters reports that the State Department report contained government rationale for indefinite detention at these facilities (the report did not address other facilities, such as the CIA 'black sites'). From the report:

"There is no question that under the law of armed conflict, the United States has the authority to detain persons who have engaged in unlawful belligerence until the cessation of hostilities".

However this defence falls down on the grounds of logic, since there is no definable 'cessation of hostilities' in the War against Terrorism. There will never be an end to a war on a tactic.