Iraq, So-Damn Insane, and Israel

I'm reading a book right now for English called 'Baghdad Burning.' It's by a fellow blogger who lives in Baghdad and has been documenting what life has been like there since America came in, back in March of 2003.
My thoughts on the Iraq War: Well, I'll admit before I started taking this English class I didn't really know anything about it. My perception was, America went in the liberate the Iraqi people from the dictator Saddam Hussein (who thank G-d is dead and hopefully rotting in Hell for all the horrific things he did). My perception of Saddam goes back to the Gulf War, when he was firing missiles on Israel. When I was young I remember that I had a punching bag of Saddam Hussein (a very graphic one with his pants falling down in the back) with a sand base, so that no matter which way you hit it, it always landed the right way up. I grew up with the image that Saddam Hussein is bad, so therefore, the country he runs must also be bad. I am now hopefully more mature in my thinking and I know that issues in the world are not black and white (although I wish sometimes it was). I know about the horror stories that came out of Iraq, how Saddam's political enemies, or really anyone who opposed him, would disappear in the middle of the night. They found mass graveyards filled with the bodies of the people who Saddam torchered, one of the methods that he liked to use was to send people feet-first into meat grinders, not a pleasant thought.
The blog that we're reading by Riverbend (you can google that) puts you in the house of a girl who describes pre-war Iraq as well as current Iraq. She describes how pre-war Iraq was pretty much like any other society, with modern cities, colleges, and people just wanting to live their lives. Now that America has gone in, she describes how everyone's lives have been turned upside-down. She was a database worker in an Iraqi firm, now she can't even go out alone for fear of being abducted and raped. This has to do with the dissolving of the Iraqi police force, who used to patrol the Iran-Iraq border. Now that they no longer exist, the Muslim extremists from Iran are coming over by the thousands and are taking over Iraq.
Now my whole take on this is kind of mixed. I feel sorry for the Iraqi people, I really do, but what were they doing when Saddam was firing missiles on innocent Israelis? Thank G-d no one was killed, but they should be happy that Saddam is gone because he was more of a threat to the Iraqi's than America ever will. Granted, now they have to deal with the religious fanaticism on the street, so it really is a lose-lose situation.
What can I say? I hope Iraq can rebuild its country, I hope they can rebuild it and become a great friend of Israel and America, but if Riverbend's opinion is the same as most of the Iraqi's I don't see how that will be possible