Bingo.
I argued for a criminal enforcement approach right after 9/11 right here for just that reason. One is that it's a lot easier to get cooperation from places like Pakistan when you come to them and say "we want to arrest the guy that just murdered 3000 people" than saying "we're going to blow shit up in your borderlands and kill a lot of your citizens who've had nothing to do with it in the hopes of getting some guys we don't like because they helped someone who committed an act of war against the US. What's that you say? Individuals can't commit acts of war? Too bad... we're going to blow shit up anyway... take it or, well, take it."
The message that the Rest of the World sees those people as nothing more than common murderers who've managed to cloak their sociopathic ways in the thin vestments of religious devotion also goes a long way to helping one's cause.
They should either put people on trial or let them go... the whole deal where they split people based on the likelihood of conviction (cf my fellow citizen Omar Khadr) is a non-starter and destroys the efficacy of the message... for example, knowing that they still intend to attempt to convict Khadr in the kangaroo court tells me that the pretty convictions are a matter of convenience and optics, not actual belief.
