If you can prove them to be spies and saboteurs then yes. At present it is more along the lines of "We think you are one so we are going to do as we please with you."
Sabotage is a deliberate action aimed at weakening an enemy, oppressor or employer through subversion, obstruction, disruption, and/or destruction. A saboteur is one who engages in sabotage. Terrorism is a form of sabotage therefore terrorists are saboteurs.
Now you and I might be fine with killing these folks, but there are plenty of people who aren't. This gets us back to the morality argument. If sabotage or treason doesn't warrant a death sentence, then what does.
As far as your assessment of how we treat these people, I'd like to see some proof. Every investigation out of gitmo has shown that there isn't anything wrong with the conditions there.
Further, the latest stats show that we recapture on the battlefield 10-20% of the folks we've released. That of course doesn't take into account the folks that we've killed and have yet to kill/capture. I dont' know about you but that tells me that most if not all of these folks aren't the maytag repair man.
I find it saddening that the same people who believe America stands for something noble in this world also accept institutionalized torture conducted by the US Gov't.
You keep saying this but I have yet to see any proof that "torture" is institutionalized. 3 people out of thousands isn't institutional by any means.
Secondly, your argument is fallacious. Its perfectly acceptable to stand for something noble and believe that we should waterboard terrorists. "Noble" doesn't come from actions, it comes from motivation. Again, killing isn't good or bad. It simply is. If I kill the mugger thats a good thing. If the mugger kills its a bad thing.
Torturing pow's in the fashion of the japanese or VC is bad while waterboarding terrorists is not for the same reason. We didn't start this conflict. We don't have any desire to continue it. We take every precaution not to harm those in detention, and we use waterboarding only after other methods have failed.
Its a massive difference that you simply refuse to recognize because then you wouldn't be able to lump everything together in one big package labled "torture".