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The thing at play here is not the construction of the houses, or their ability to withstand modern munitions.
It's that by firing from a building and immediately displacing, you force the enemy to level the house, and at the same time make you a ready made fortification of rubble.
Displacing infantry from rubble is one of the hardest things in all of warfare to do.
When a squad or platoon takes up positions on both sides of a block, and in numerous structures along that block, and they DON'T fire until the enemy is in the middile of the block, they can fire from elevated and defiled positions into vehicles rear and flanks after diversionary fires into the enemy's front fix his attention forward.
An RPG-7 fired down onto the rear deck of a tank or IFV will get you a mobility kill. Once one tank in the column is immobilized, you have created a barrier that is extremely hard to manuever around, and you cut the lead element's off from the follow on force.
You force infantry to dismount and command the high ground(rooftops) to secure the site while the disabled vehicle/s are recovered, and the road is cleared. The dismount infantry has to fight it's way up to the roofs, negotiating enemy fire coming down on them, and the myriad booby traps and improvised explosive devices MOUT is known for.
When you do this on block after block, in nieghborhood after nieghborhood, the cost to your opponent in men, vehicles, and materiel' quickly mounts.
Baghdad was a golden opportunity for Iraq to put a hurt on us, and they missed it entirely.
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