Yes, the celestial event that everyone is promoting for this August is
the one that happened in 2003. This two year old email is being
recirculated again as being current.
The date of closest approach this year is October 31, although actual
date of opposition is November 7th.
This is 26 months AFTER the super-close approach of August 27, 2003.
So Mars will be very nice from about 15 Oct until 15 November, this
year.
(And again 26 months later in January/February 2008.)