Even those who, from the outset, were sceptical about the shallow, vacuous policy described in London and Washington as "regime change" have been left flabbergasted by the perception of Saddam Hussein's sentencing as a 24-hour wonder. Can it really have come to that? One night's headlines on western news bulletins, the following morning's front pages, and then - nothing? Saddam Hussein was sentenced to death for crimes against humanity on 5 November. The nest day, he was back in the courtroom in Baghdad's Green Zone and there was barely a mention of it anywhere.

In the run-up to the invasion, the Iraqi dictator was central to everything Tony Blair and George W Bush said about the country. Both spoke continually about "confronting Saddam", "Saddam's evil", and "ridding the world of Saddam". They hardly ever spoke about their views on Iraq and its 25 million people; the divisions between provincial and urban populations; the role of clan and tribal systems; how the regime and its security apparatus reflected not just sectarian but tribal connections to Saddam Hussein. All the problems which Iraq faced and all its uncertainties would be solved with the overthrow of the dictator and his lieutenants.

Their capture and trial should have been a seminal moment, not just in the history of Iraq but of the entire Middle East. For the first time, a hated and callous regime was to have its crimes examined and aired in public. The dictator would be confronted by his victims and their families. And he would face justice.

Instead, throughout it all, Saddam's trial has been a minor side story. It was reported dramatically and briefly when he first appeared in court, and again when he was sentenced. Apart from that, events taking place outside the courtroom - the violence and lawlessness, the flight of the educated and the descent into civil war - have dominated the politics of Iraq, Britain, the US and the rest of the Middle East. Can there be any greater indication of how disastrously things have gone wrong in Iraq than this?

The celebrations in many parts of the country at the news that Saddam had been sentenced to death were genuine and heartfelt. But the absence of rejoicing in other areas illustrated the deep sectarian divisions at the heart of Iraqi society. Saddam and his regime were detested by the overwhelming majority of Iraqis, including Sunnis; many families and tribes in Iraq have marital links that cross sectarian lines. The regime persecuted all who opposed it, and cared little for whether they were Shia or Sunni.

Sectarian origins were equally meaningless within the regime; some of its most senior members - such as Saddam's former vice-president Taha Yassin Ramadan, who was born in Mosul - were Kurds and Shias. Iyad Allawi, the recent prime minister championed by the west, was a member of the Ba'ath Party even though he was a Shia.

Yet because of the reckless and narrow-sighted policies of the US and UK in the wake of Saddam's overthrow, sectarian loyalties have become much more important than they were.

The dictator has come to represent something else for many Sunnis, who feel that the occupation and the disbanding of state institutions such as the army, civil service and the police force, which they had dominated, has punished them as a community far more than any other sectarian group.

As a result, Saddam and the regime are seen by many as symbolic of what they have lost as a community. This is why his image and his memory is now hailed in towns and villages in Sunni-dominated central Iraq. How on earth did this come to pass?

As Patrick Cockburn put it so neatly, Saddam Hussein should not have been a hard act to follow. That he should be regarded as almost a hero by some speaks volumes about the profound strategic failure of British and American policy. And when he is eventually dangling from the hangman's noose, what will change? Will it remove the causes of the insurgency? Will it raise London and Washington's standing in the eyes of Iraqi society?

The British and American governments invaded Iraq on the basis of many illusions. This is just the latest to come to the fore. They thought that Saddam and Saddamism were the same thing, and they believed that simply overthrowing the regime would give them infinite legitimacy in the eyes of Iraqis.

Two abiding images of Saddam Hussein's fall stay in my mind. One of them should have been the more superficial - when the breaking of his power was illustrated by the tearing down of his statue in Firdoos Square in Baghdad. Yet this completely symbolic image seems to stick in most people's minds, rather than the very real image of the former dictator being tried in court . How ironic that this far more important event is already fading from memory.

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