Agreed. As much as I hate Clinton, the call to hold back armor and AC-130 support was a necessary evil, given the terrain. Time and again it has been proven that using armor in a MOUT environment is suicidal. Just look into the Russians and their problems in Grozny. Also, while a good portion of the city was attacking our soldiers during the Battle of Mogadishu, a larger segment were just living day-to-day life. Send AC-130 gunships into that environment and you'll literally slaughter 100s of people who had nothing to do with the battle.
The mission should've been better executed, and the U.N. commanders should've been executed for holding back on us b/c they weren't "in the know" of our operators in the area.
Regarding the AC-130s, I also had the impression that the Military brass did NOT want these heavy gunships in the mix. Even with hindsight, it was concluded that the 'Little Birds' they actually used were best suited for air support in the kind of close-in street fighting that developed, and that the air support they provided prevented the casualty list from being much longer than it was.
The movie makes it clear how close the targets that air support was supposed to hit were to our own boys. An AC-130 could not have hit those targets without unacceptable risk to the Rangers and D-boys.