Unfortunately, we didn't vote for one. We broke it, and sadly, we bought it.
More accurately you broke it and then just quietly swept it under the carpet while repeating a mantra "Sadam is gone Yay for us"
I remember an article a while back that for all the evils of Sadam, he was actually keeping the more extreme groups in his country in line.
Nothing really ever changes does it?
Saddam was a horrible person, and there is no denying that. BUT, he was rabidly atheist and knew the dangers of letting the extremists have any kind of real power. Unfortunately, that region still tends to follow the local leaders rather than the national. So you end up with a whole lot of different belief sets that are often at odds with each other. Without a strong leader to force them to work together, there is chaos just like what is currently happening.
Bear in mind also that, while Saddam was certainly fairly brutal, most of his moves were based around him gaining more power and land (gassing the Kurds and attacking Kuwait, for example). These were bad things, but fairly straightforward military actions. His sons were the personally brutal ones. They were known to have people kidnapped, commit rapes and murders when they wanted a woman, etc. Saddam should have brought them into check, and allowing them to continue really hurt his already damaged reputation.
This is not unlike what happened in Iran. Iran used to be one of the most progressive Islamic nations when the Shah was in power. Except, the Shah displeased the US and Britain (by trying to sell their oil for higher prices), so those nations worked with the rebels to depose him. And then the Ayatollah and ruling council took power.
