It's also arguable that they said it because...well..they knew it would be a long operation and they didn't want the country looking for a 2 month war.
Plenty of things *had* to be blown up. Al Qaeda and the Taliban did have a number of military targets that required destruction. They were destroyed.
What people are failing to remember is the magnitude of this entire operation. It's a lot more than flying to Afghanistan and dropping a bomb on Bin Laden's head after he puts his big, bad guy, black hat on so we can see him easily.
Al Qaeda was spread throughout the world. It involved squeezing them in every way possible, from killing their funding, to seizing their assets, to removing their asylums, to destroying what little military they had, to all kinds of crap. It was a large, complex operation.
Watching CNN doesn't give anyone a true glimpse of everything that is going on, and anyone who thinks they know the whole situation from that little stream of info is nuts.
Our military is trained well and provided with top notch equipment...it doesn't mean everything gets done in a day. I'm more than willing to let the people who are trained to do this shit, do it, and have a little patience in the meantime.