Can a loop be expressed by only the sequence of statements and the choice of statements?
I convinced myself that this is not possible, I was indeed mixing up the selection structure with conditional jumps; but they're not equally expressive.

The conditional jump is as powerful as both selection and iteration together; this is what compilers use to rewrite both choice statements and loop statements.

As a counterexample for rewriting any loop using only the first two control structures, think of an infinite loop. This can not be rewritten using only sequence and selection while it can be rewritten using sequence and conditional jumps. So, we would lose expressiveness if we went without iterations.



Addendum to clear up the terminology:


Sequence
Selection (synonymous to choice), for example IF or SWITCH
Iteration (synonymous to loop), for example WHILE or FOR