On the heels of word that the United States maintains secret "black site" detention centers overseas and in the face of efforts to resist an outright ban on torture of detainees comes the latest suggestion that many in Washington have lost sight of what we are fighting for in our "war" against terror.

The Senate voted, largely along party lines, to bar individuals held in Guantanamo Bay from challenging their detention in federal court. If passed, the bill would reverse a ruling from the Supreme Court that said detainees are entitled to file such claims.

Commendably, Hawai'i Sens. Daniel Akaka and Daniel Inouye voted against the proposal, which now goes into House-Senate conference committee deliberations. That's where it should die.

Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham, a prime supporter of the effort, said it simply reinforces what has been American war policy for 200 years: "That prisoners in a war should not be able to go into court and sue the people that are fighting the war."

That's an appealing argument. But it fails the logic test since the Guantanamo detainees, as well as many held elsewhere, are not being treated as prisoners of war with all the rights and protections granted such individuals under the Geneva Conventions.

Rather, they are in a legal and status limbo, neither combatants nor prisoners of war. And remember, all the Supreme Court said is that these people should have the right to file petitions in federal courts. It did not recognize any particular right that they might win through legal proceedings.

The day will come when the United States and its allies "win" the war on terror. There can be no other outcome. When that day comes, it is crucial that we can look back and say we won while respecting the traditions and rights that make America worth fighting for in the first place.

This kind of shortsighted, issue-specific legislation is not worthy of the U.S. Congress.