New restrictions on detainee interrogations being implemented by the Pentagon are "closer" to the Geneva Conventions, according to the US army.
Mr Thomas Gandy, a senior Army intelligence official, said the Defence Department is creating new "boundaries of behaviours" for interrogation techniques in policy changes following the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal.
"We'll leave far less up to the interrogator to decide what they can and cannot do," Mr Gandy said, acknowledging that previous Army doctrine on interrogation methods had not been specific enough.
Mr Gandy said military dogs will never be used in interrogations. Some of the photos from Abu Ghraib showed US personnel menacing detainees with snarling dogs.
In an interrogation manual nearing completion, Mr Gandy said, requirements of the Geneva Conventions regarding the treatment of prisoners "are well integrated into the techniques" permitted to be used by the US military in interrogations.
He did not describe specific limits on other interrogation methods, some of which have been called abusive by human rights organisations.
Major General Donald Ryder, Army law enforcement policy chief, told a briefing the US Army has conducted more than 300 criminal investigations into allegations of detainee abuse by US troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.