Can you be more specific

Don't you just hate losing on a technicality?

That's exactly what happened to a group of attorneys this week when a military judge threw out the charges against a man held at Guantanamo Bay on suspicion of terror-related activities.

As The Associated Press reported, Omar Khadr, a 20-year-old who was captured five years ago in Afghanistan, is on the receiving end of an edict in the 2006 Military Commissions Act — war trials at Gitmo are only authorized for "unlawful" combatants. Khadr, the AP says, was classified as an enemy combatant without the preceding "unlawful" tag.

Some might see it as the equivalent of having the right answer on "Jeopardy!" but not phrasing it in the form of the question.

"I'll take legal blunders for $400, Alex."

I'm well-acquainted with the intricacy of the English language, and I imagine most people have little to no desire to stand in the position of making sure these minor, bureaucratic matters are properly addressed.

But this isn't a daytime game show. This time we're talking war. This time we're dealing with people's lives and national security.

It's tempting to immediately side with the hard-working attorneys devoted to these cases. One of them — Marine Col. Dwight Sullivan — said of the judge's decision to dismiss charges, "It's the latest demonstration that this newest system just does not work," according to AP.

I chalk this one up to an all-too-rare case of the establishment not having its ducks in a row. But give them some credit: Some of those detainees may have posed some form of threat to America or American interests had they not been captured and held.

Say what you will about how they have been treated individually — that's an entirely different story. If we are going to take this war and the thousands of American lives lost while waging it seriously, the taxpayer-funded legal teams charged with bringing these men to justice need to dot every I, cross every T and be far more attentive to details than this news suggests.