The officials, who are involved in day-to-day management of Iraqi policy, said the doubts would have to be overcome should President Bush decide to use force.

The death, Miss Tutwiler said, "Underscores again the barbaric nature of Iraqi policy."

"Iraqi policy is very much on his mind," one senior Pentagon official said.

King Hussein of Jordan also openly criticized Iraqi policies on national television on 23 August 1995.

This shift in Iraqi policy illustrates two rules of thumb for predicting the behavior of Arab states.

Another problem with the Baghdad security operation, critics say, is that it depended on Iraqi policies that were never adequately carried out.

President Bush and his aides are, of course, just at the beginning, still hammering out a new and, they say, more muscular Iraqi policy.

Typically, the administration has used executive privilege to limit congressional access to documents dealing with Iraqi policy.

With that gesture, it became official Iraqi policy to be nice to Americans, and the children were scripted to describe the glowing relationship.

The percentage of people who disapproved of Mr. Bush's Iraqi policy dropped 15 points, to 27 percent, during that same period.