Detainees' future may hinge on Cuba lease:Is Guantanamo Bay US property or not? The answer could affect the handling of Taliban prisoners.

GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, CUBA – At the height of the cold war, US forces maintained a hair-trigger alert along a 17-mile fence line to defend the soil of this military base against communist encroachment.
Now, at the height of a different kind of war, US government lawyers are arguing that Guantanamo isn't American at all, that it really belongs to Cuba.

It is more than just an esoteric debate about an open-ended 1903 lease agreement with Cuba establishing Guantanamo as a US coaling station. Rather, it goes to the heart of the Bush administration's effort to convert a portion of this dusty naval base into a terrorist penal colony beyond the reach of US laws and constitutional protections.