The deaths of Uday and Qusay Hussein will provide a welcome morale-boost for the Anglo-US forces in Iraq. It has become all too clear in recent weeks, as casualties have mounted and budgets escalated, that America and Britain gravely underestimated the task awaiting them in post-war Iraq. What the occupying powers may not yet fully appreciate, however, is the extent of their long-term liability under international law. Because they rejected a United Nations-supervised administration of post-Hussein Iraq, the US and Britain needlessly shoulder most of the legal responsibility for the success or failure of the administration and reconstruction of Iraq....
