Halabja penned a letter to Trump criticizing him for his praise of the late Iraqi president Saddam Hussein, Rudaw reports. In July, Trump said Saddam was “so good” at killing terrorists, and in December said “Saddam Hussein throws a little gas, everyone goes crazy, ‘Oh he’s using gas!” mocking the assertions that Saddam had chemical weapons leading up to the 2003 US invasion. No weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) were ever found.
“We would like to remind Mr. Trump that Saddam Hussein’s use of chemical gas in our city alone on March 16th, 1988 killed over 5,000 civilians, including children, women and men and wounding over 10,000 more,” the letter read.
In the 1980s and 1990s, Saddam’s forces brutally gassed Iraqi Kurds. Halabja was the site of one of the worst of these massacres in 1988, when between 3,200 and 5,000 Kurds died in a chemical attack, most believed to be civilians.
Trump has been a long time critic of the Iraq War, although records indicate much of his criticisms came after the war began.
Why the letter came out now was not clear. The city is demanding an apology from Trump.
The latest poll averages from Real Clear Politics have Trump trailing Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton by 7 percentage points.
AL
