This is the 20th Anniversary of the chemical attack (NBC) that defined all the attacks on the Kurds. You can read about it here and here.
As the latter article points out, it's also the 5 year anniversary of the effort to free Iraq of that same monster. The protesters will be against his "illegal" removal. She offers an award to anyone brave enough to carry a sign about the other anniversary.
My fav quotes:
On March 16, 1988, Iraqi warplanes bombed the Kurdish town of Halabja with chemical weapons including sarin and mustard gas, targeting civilians as part of the Anfal campaign to rid Iraq of its Kurds. Five thousand — three-quarters of them women and children — died from the chemical cocktail. Children trying to rush home fell in the street, while the insidious gasses claimed those who cowered in basements from what they thought was a traditional bombardment. Thousands were left with chemical burns, blindness, cancers, birth defects, etc.
and...
But as the war protesters take to the streets today, they won’t be terribly concerned with the genocide that should have made the international community bring Saddam to his knees. While busy painting the U.S. as the cruelest of warmongers, they won’t remember Halabja. To do so would give others the impression that taking out Saddam was, indeed, completely justified.
Chemical Ali, who left quite a paper and audio and video trail, will hang soon, but they never even got around to prosecuting him about this one.
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