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I re-read your Holder quotes and I do see your point. I was misreading it because, frankly, it was hard for me to fathom that Holder would be so sloppy in either his thinking or his articulation as to suggest that unlawful combatants are not subject to the Geneva Conventions. Everyone is subject to the Geneva Conventions, it's just a matter of which parts.
The reason I was giving him the benefit of the doubt is that I distinctly remember that the fight within the administration was whether the Taliban members were entitled to POW status. That's what I remember State Department Legal Adviser Will Taft really going to the mat about--and again, the point was not to ensure humane treatment for the detainees, as that was (supposed to be) a given regardless of their lawful combatant status. The point was simply to uphold the State Department's long-term and abiding interest in the proper legal interpretation of the Geneva Conventions. State always has in the back of their minds that, what goes around, comes around.
From my observation point, it seemed to me that the dunderheads at DOD either couldn't or wouldn't look at the Geneva Conventions themselves and wrap their brains around the notion that declaring someone an unlawful combatant was not going to remove the Geneva Conventions from the picture or otherwise legitimize what has now come to be known as "enhanced interrogation techniques." The dynamic was such that certain parties at DOD would just get a bee in their bonnet about something and at that point there was no reasoning with them; you were with them or you were with the terrorists.
If your interpretation of Holder's remarks is correct, this suggests that he never actually looked at the Geneva Conventions himself, which is kind of disturbing. Is it possible he was just caught off guard by the question and hadn't had the time to delve into the raging DOD-DOS debate to respond in a more nuanced fashion?
