Should Cash be considered a part of Working Capital

This question can be looked in two different ways

The first view is that the cash that is present with the companies is generally invested in treasury bills, short term government securities and commerical papers.Moreover they are riskless investments so while discounting we do not us a risk free rate. Therefore there comes a logical inconsistency

The second view is that, there are industries which are working capital intensive and hence require a large amount of cash for their day to day operations, for such companies it makes sense to assume that 5% of the cash would to be a part of the working capital cycle

Should short term debt and part of long term retiring be considered a part of current liabilities ?

They should not be considered a part of the working capital and should be considered while calculating the cost of capital. There is no sense in double counting it. But if you use the FCFE method then it makes sense to include the short term debt to be a part of the working capital as it will not be taken into account during the Cost of equity calculation