Will US military treat detainees differently now?

In military facilities, though, former Army interrogator Ritz says many of the Geneva requirements are already in place. For one, interrogators have always been trained in the Geneva Conventions. "In training, it's stressed that you don't even put a hand on a source or you will go to jail," he says. "Probably what we saw [in instances of abuse] is a lack of supervision or supervisers who thought it would behoove them to look the other way."

Moreover, he says, the reaction to Abu Ghraib has created a hypersensitivity. It is at once good and bad. "If we condone [torture], it's a very, very slippery slope and we surely would be headed down it," Ritz says. "But ... announcing to the public what the US is and isn't capable of doing takes away an interrogator's most powerful weapon: the unknown."

Others aren't so convinced that the military has been on its best behavior. If Deputy Secretary England felt certain that the military was complying with all its regulations, why did he take another page to lay out the rules of the Geneva Conventions and demand a militarywide review, they ask.

"He's acknowledging the reality that compliance has not been perfect," suggests John Hutson, former Judge Advocate General of the Navy.

Regardless, he and others say, the memo sends a strong message to troops, Congress, and the international community. After such a long US fight to exempt "enemy combatants" from Geneva protections, a letter from such a senior Pentagon official represents a "course correction" for this administration, says Scott Silliman, a former Air Force lawyer who now teaches at Duke Law School in Durham, N.C.

What it means for the military tribunals created to try enemy combatants is less clear. The tenor of the memo – and of subsequent statements by the White House – suggests that the administration is moving away from its insistence that the tribunals differ markedly from military courts-martial. Previously, the administration had set up tribunals that would allow hearsay as evidence, for example, and allow prosecutors to present sensitive evidence that would be kept secret from the defendant.

The change in position is motivated by the US Supreme Court, which on June 29 struck down the terror tribunals as needing congressional approval. Even so, the administration's apparent willingness to comply with the decision so completely is "remarkable," says William Banks, a military-law expert at Syracuse University.

Still, there are questions. At a congressional hearing Tuesday, Pentagon lawyers pressed Congress to pass a law allowing terror tribunals like the ones originally laid out by Mr. Bush. Given the conciliatory tone of the memo and the White House statements, "it's a disconnect," says Professor Silliman. "We'll have to wait and see ... if the administration meant what it said."

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