[1] The AR 1900-8 Tribunals was to set out the details of how the US military was to comply with the US's obligations, under the Third Geneva Convention, to convene a "competent tribunal" to determine the status of captives whose status was in doubt.
According to the Geneva Conventions, innocent civilians should be immediately released; lawful combatants should enjoy the protections of POW status until hostilities are over; and only those determined to have violated the laws of war can face charges for hostile activity.
The position of the George W. Bush Presidency was that captives apprehended during the "war on terror" were not eligible for the protections of the Geneva Conventions.
[1] The United States Supreme Court ruled, in Rasul v. Bush that captives could not be held indefinitely.
[1] In practice the Guantanamo Bay detention camp in Cuba contains over one hundred captives who do not receive annual Administrative Review Board hearings, because their Combatant Status Review Tribunal had already been determined not to have been enemy combatants, or because an earlier Administrative Review Board had already determined that they should be released.