Why not just put their heads on pikes and parade them through Baghdad?

Or string them up in the public square with armed guards around them until the meat rots off them?

Who are we acting like?

I don't know who Salaam Pax is, and I'm very suspicious of this blog, but he said something that made a lot of sense to me: why was there so little effort to take them alive? The firepower used indicated that the commanders knew they had something big. Was there even an attempt at gas, or to lay siege to the place?

Of course it's easy to second-guess. Once committed, the soldiers on the ground did as they were ordered. But why were the orders what they were? Was it more important that they be dead so they couldn't be questioned? Or is storage (and display) of the dead so much more convenient than capture of and secure imprisonment for the living that the loss of potential information was justified?

Regards--
Mary Anne