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It is an under-reported fact that many of Saddam's former officers in the Baathist elements of the insurgency have continued to entertain serious hope of restoring the dictator to power. My experience with Baathist sympathizers during my recent assignment in Iraq was that this is even more widespread among the rank and file. Saddam himself has referred to this several times during his trial and his American quisling lawyers have supported the assertion.

The standard media response was simply to laugh it off as the delusion of a condemned psychopath, something like Hitler's last-days raving about "secret weapons" that would turn the tide of war. (And let us not forget that there was a lot of substance to Nazi claims of super-weapons, though the allies had them trumped with the atomic bomb.)

The reason for the lack of emphasis on this desire to restore Saddam is obvious: media shills would not want anyone to think that something as simple as hanging one criminal could derail a large part of the insurgency. It just does not fit with the media-left worldview that terrorism and insurgency could spring from anything but the most deep-rooted and legitimate motives; poverty, oppression, colonialism, etc.

At the risk of belaboring the obvious, just stringing the bastard up will not end the Baathist insurgency entirely, especially in the short run. They will pander to the media and the Democratic Congress, for example, by representing all of their subsequent attacks as "Dire Revenge" for the hanging. Of course, these are attacks they would have carried out anyway, but the usual suspects are desperately willing to be taken in by the claim.
It fits their "cycle of violence" meme perfectly and they are loathe to even consider other possibilities, even very obvious ones.

In the longer term, support for the Baathist elements will decline, probably at a precipitous rate. This will not eliminate AQ and the Al-Sadr forces, though AQ may have a hard time of it in some areas without Baathist support, but it will allow our resources to be concentrated better.