Was the Bombing of Bagdhad tactically necessary?

[Must_B_Free]

As I recall the fighting was essentially over sometime before they got to Bagdhad and then when they got there, there was little fighting, but they went ahead and blew it up anyway, then declared "Mission Complete".

I know they had the jollies to display our "Shock and Awe" war power to intimidate the rest of the world, but is that alone reason enough in itself to unleash these bombs and destroy all we did?

Does anyone else smell a rat in all this? I mean calling the destruction of the buildings "Mission Complete" followed by the commitment of billions of our dollars, and our childrens dollars, and their childrens dollars to no bid contracts for the vice president's company to rebuild a nation half way around the world that never needed to be destroyed, while our own falls apart?

[Bucky]

1. Can't answer specifically, but the tendency seems to be that...

The army generally handles things professionally. I've met a number of vets from Desert Storm and Desert Fox and from Kosovo (which was more an Air Force operation) and they all talk about what a big deal their officers made about not killing civilians needlessly. Other anecdotal evidence I've seen supports that idea, that US forces do what they have to do and take greater care than other armies in the world to see that bystanders don't get killed. The assymmetrical distribution of power between our guys and theirs sometimes gives our forces this luxury, but obviously a lot of people still end up dead (8000-10,000 civilians; perhaps half again that many Iraqi military) when you try to take over a modern nation.

The big screw ups and the inevitable massive loss of civilian lives today is almost entirely the fault of the civil administration that makes the policy decision to go to war when war isn't needed or justified. I don't blame our troops, who, from what I've seen, have done as good a job as possible given the reckless mission they were ordered into.