“Detainees at Camp X-Ray in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, have been caught hiding stones in their cages for possible use as weapons against military guards, senior US army officers have revealed.

“The details of the potential dangers presented by the captives further undermined the position of Gen Colin Powell, the secretary of state, who has argued that they should be treated as prisoners of war under the Geneva Convention,” The Telegraph reports.

During a visit to Camp X-Ray yesterday, Donald Rumsfeld, the defence secretary, insisted: ‘They are not PoWs. They will not be determined to be PoWs.’

Brig Michael Lehnert, commanding troops at the base, said earlier that there were signs of a structure and activities emerging among the prisoners that could be a prelude to an act of violence or escape attempt.

Where does the UK’s Telegraph stand on all this, you ask? Well, in addition to the couple of pointed reference to detainees being held in “cages” (and to their hiding stones for “possible” weapons use, as opposed to, say, saving them for some supersecret archeological research project), the story offers this peculiar observation:

Revealing the Bush administration’s scepticism about the value of the Geneva Convention, Mr Gonzalez wrote that Mr Bush’s statement that the war on terrorism was ‘a new kind of war’ had in some respects made it irrelevant [emphasis mine]

Hmm. Is the Bush administration really exhibiting “scepticism” about the Geneva Convention’s “value,” or has it merely determined that the Convention does not apply to these particular prisoners in this particular (and highly unusual) case…?