His nickname alone is enough to make many Iraqis shudder, which is not to mention the gruesome memories of how he came by it: overseeing the deadly gassing of thousands of Iraqi Kurds in 1988. So it's no wonder that when Ali Hassan al-Majid was put in charge of defending southern Iraq in the prelude to Gulf War II, some U.S. officials had much the same reaction. Who, after all, would be more qualified to launch a poisonous-gas attack on U.S. forces than the accused war criminal known as Chemical Ali?
In a regime built on terror, al-Majid, 62, has stood...
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