U.S. Orders Pilots to Try to Avoid Civilian Casualties : Bombing: But ‘you’ve got to hit what you’ve got to hit,’ official says. Many weapons are highly accurate.

U.S. pilots who bombed Iraqi targets were under special orders to avoid civilian casualties if possible, but many high-priority targets are in heavily populated areas, increasing the potential for civilian casualties, senior Defense Department officials said Wednesday.

Secret rules of engagement issued by Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf ordered “all reasonable precautions” to avoid killing noncombatants during all operations, according to Defense Department officials.

“That is our goal, not to hit a single civilian target,” a senior Administration official said. But in the end, he added, “you’ve got to hit what you’ve got to hit” and accept the risks that civilians will get caught in the cross-fire. He noted there could also be accidental destruction of religious and cultural sites.

The U.S. planes, missiles and bombs that struck Iraq in the pre-dawn hours today Baghdad time were among the most technologically sophisticated ever used in warfare, and pilots in the Middle East had rehearsed finely choreographed attacks on targets in simulators and over the Saudi desert.

Modern tactical aircraft can place their weapons within 20 feet of their targets in 50% of their bombing runs during tests--a standard measurement of weapons’ accuracy. During the Vietnam War, U.S. warplanes could put weapons only within 500 feet of their targets at the same rate.

But war planners and experts, pointing to largely human errors in raids on targets in Libya and Panama, acknowledged significant potential for misses and accidental destruction.

Also, naval gunfire and ground-based artillery are generally less accurate than many aircraft-borne weapons. In initial uses, such weapons must be fired six or more times to allow gunnery teams to “walk up” to targets.

However, the Tomahawk cruise missiles, fired from the battleships Missouri and Wisconsin, are among the most accurate in the U.S. arsenal. They were used specifically with that feature in mind so as to avoid civilian casualties.

The dangers to civilians were particularly clear in the case of Baghdad, where hundreds of thousands of civilians live and work near many important industrial and military sites. U.S. officials said before the bombing began that such sites would have to be knocked out to cripple Iraq’s military machine at some point, despite their proximity to civilian neighborhoods.

Pentagon officials said the Iraqis knowingly and in some cases deliberately put key military and industrial sites near densely populated civilian areas.

In downtown Baghdad, the President’s Palace, Baath Party headquarters and the Council of Ministers building are nestled close to residential areas and apartment buildings rising to eight and 10 stories.

“It would suit them just fine to see a lot of civilian casualties,” said one Pentagon official before the bombing started. Earlier Wednesday, he said the United States would likely remind Baghdad formally that they have an obligation to remove civilians from proximity to military sites. But it remains unclear whether such a warning was delivered.

Frank Abrahamian, 46, a U.S. citizen from Glendale who remains close to aunts, uncles and cousins in Baghdad, cited concerns about threats to family and friends. He noted he grew up in a neighborhood near an Army camp in eastern Baghdad called Al Masbah, which he said was used mainly to base soldiers.

“It is a very long, beautiful street where children play soccer and ride their bikes. Nobody worries about their kids playing outside because they are safe. Are they going to be bombed also?”

The prospect of extensive casualties also has haunted Iraqi-Americans like Abrahamian, who were shocked by a remark made by Gen. Michael J. Dugan. Dugan was fired as Air Force chief of staff just days after publicly naming military targets that included “downtown Baghdad.”

Suggesting that some cultural sites could be added to a list of strictly-military targets, Dugan said, “I want to know what is unique about Iraq. . . . What is it that psychologically would make an impact on the population and the regime in Iraq?”

Many Iraqi-Americans have warned that because of extended Arab family ties and the key role that families play in Arab society, civilian casualties will send shock waves throughout the Arab world.

“When Americans talk about family, it is their immediate family,” said Waad Omar. “But we live with our families our whole lives. Why is it in the U.S. interest to hurt innocents? Why must you bomb civilians?”

Pentagon officials Wednesday morning and afternoon were at pains to give assurances that cultural targets like mosques and archeological treasures would not knowingly be bombed--unless they had been converted to significant military use.

There was no indication of any warning to civilians before the attacks on Iraq and Kuwait began.

“It is a hallmark of the American military that we always plan for a minimum of collateral damage and an absolute minimum of civilian casualties,” said Pentagon spokesman Pete Williams prior to the outbreak of hostilities. “It’s in the training and it’s part of the doctrine.”

But officials at the Pentagon said the commanders of Operation Desert Shield have been given broad latitude in planning targets for a strike. According to one knowledgeable source, senior leaders at the Pentagon last week were briefed on the final version of rules of engagement guiding Persian Gulf hostilities.

Those rules, in turn, give lower-level commanders extensive latitude in defining what “reasonable precautions” should be taken to minimize the casualties.

The hands-off attitude of U.S. civilian leaders is considered to be a response to what many believe was a political micromanagement of the war in Vietnam.