San Juan, Puerto Rico ? A hardened holy warrior, eager to kill U.S. troops. An Afghan peasant concerned only with feeding his family. A wealthy Londoner who says he spied for British intelligence.

Captured in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, these men – and dozens more – are identified for the first time in Guantanamo Bay transcripts the Pentagon delivered to The Associated Press. Their stories suggest how difficult it is, four years after the 9-11 attacks, to determine who is a terrorist, and who was simply swept up in the fog of war.

People from many walks of life were captured and brought to the prison at the U.S. naval base in eastern Cuba, where most remain held without charges.

In a typical guerrilla war, conventional forces struggle to distinguish friend from foe. But the U.S. war against terrorism is unique. It is being fought across the globe, against enemies operating from the shadows of the Hindu Kush mountains in Afghanistan to the alleyways of Islamabad to the neighborhoods of London; Madrid, Spain; and Jakarta, Indonesia.

In Afghanistan, men often carry a rifle. Unless they are caught red-handed firing on U.S. troops, it is difficult to tell the terrorists from the farmers.

“They’re all armed,” said John Pike, director of Global

Security.org, a military policy think tank in Alexandria, Va. “If they weren’t, they’d be in trouble. There are clan rivalries there. Without a weapon they’d feel naked.”

Mohammed Gul, from Afghanistan’s eastern Khost province, told his military tribunal at Guantanamo that he was captured at his home.

A Kalashnikov assault rifle was found in the house, but Gul insisted he was just a farmer and not linked to forces attacking U.S. and coalition troops.

“I am a poor person,” Gul said. “I have a small piece of land.”

The Bush administration scoffs at such claims of innocence.

“They’re bomb-makers,” Vice President Dick Cheney said recently. “They’re facilitators of terror. They’re members of al-Qaida and the Taliban. If you let them out, they’ll go back to trying to kill Americans.”