The US Central Command combat surveillance video showed an Iraqi military vehicle hiding beneath a bridge. A smart bomb glided in from the right, destroying the vehicle but leaving the bridge intact.
Then came a surveillance picture of Iraqi military communications equipment atop a building within some 2,000-year-old ruins on the bank of the Tigris River, a historic site recognized by the UN.
In that case, American commanders decided not to strike.
These two targets, and the opposite decisions made as to whether to attack, illustrate the complicated task given to US war planners who are charged with destroying a government but not a country.
The military mission calls for coalition forces to topple President Saddam Hussein and rid his nation of any weapons of mass destruction that may be hidden there. At the same time, the war plan calls for leaving as much Iraqi infrastructure as possible standing to ease postwar reconstruction, and to minimize civilian deaths, as well as to quiet angry public opinion.
As the war enters its second week, however, military affairs experts ponder whether more indiscriminate bombing might, in the end, hasten victory and save the lives of US troops, and even spare more Iraqis the pain of a grinding ground war.
"We decided we would restrain the use of air power for reasons of humanity and world image," said Loren Thompson, an air power expert at the Lexington Institute, a policy research center here.
"We have imposed a burden on our campaign plan that may slow down victory and diminish the quality of the victory we achieve," he said.
US generals can ratchet up the violence delivered by air with just a command, Thompson noted, and they are expected to do so as US ground forces move to face Republican Guard troops encircling Baghdad.
The question is what measure of risks to civilian casualties and sensitive buildings like hospitals and schools will be considered acceptable in order to secure a speedier victory. This quandary has been placed upon US commanders by Saddam, who has ordered his forces arrayed in neighborhoods, even using hospitals as garrisons, according to Pentagon officials.
The mantra heard at almost every wartime press conference held by US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld or General Tommy Franks, the senior commander for the war, and his subordinates is that the US military will continue its efforts to exercise extreme prudence in targeting and attacks in order to minimize civilian deaths and damage to public works.
"We have a very, very deliberate process for targeting," said Brigadier General Vincent Brooks, deputy director of operations for the US Central Command, during a briefing in Qatar yesterday.
"It's unlike any other targeting process in the world. It takes into account all science. It takes into account all capability. And we do everything physically and scientifically possible to be precise in our targeting and also to minimize secondary effects, whether it's on people or on structures," he said.
But the second-guessing is well underway.
"Selective bombing is wrongheaded; perpetuating the regime causes more casualties, certainly among Iraqi troops, than `collateral damage' would," wrote Edward Luttwak, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, in a commentary published by the Los Angeles Times yesterday.
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