Iraq v. transformers

Went to see Transformers (yes, I hate myself for it, but that's not the point I'm making).
After WOTW, it was surely obvious that the immediate reading of unprovoked-invasion-of-earth by technologically-more-advanced-civilization was the American invasion of Iraq (Tom Cruise as sunni rebel). Was that the reason why Transformers introduced, as an absolute distraction from its main hero group (clueless teens) a platoon of American soldiers to be seen fighting the bad robots at every opportunity - to take the curse off the analogy? Certainly when the robot helicopter was destroying the US base in Qatar I was cheering it on. What was the US doing forbidding overflights over a friendly sovereign nation in the first place?

Though the US military added another plot difficulty; the robot apparently destroyed the base without working up a sweat, but was unable shortly later to take out the platoon when it was sheltering in an Iraqi (or Quatari, I suppose)oasis. What use is a technologically-more-advanced-civilization that can't simply march over the top of a heavy machinegun? The tank that turned itself into a decepticon seemed to be less deadly as a decepticon than it had been as a tank.

I was slightly more forgiving later when you had a hundred-foot-tall megatron that couldn't outrun an out-of-condition teenager, because without that you wouldn't have had a plot.