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My question to you and other legal scholars, though, is has it been clearly decided that the GCs (that we have ratified) legally apply to and govern our conflict with al-Qaida? I'm asking because I don't actually know the true answer.
I've already registered my objections to your qualification about ratification, under Vienna. As for whether or not the Geneva Conventions apply at all to the conflict, if they don't, our soldiers are guilty of murder whenever they kill. You can't have it both ways. Either the conflict is an armed conflict subject to the laws of war, or it is not, in which case soldiers have no right to take human life and are murderers.
