Hard to know just what to make of this.

Early today an Icelandic TPM reader wrote in to tell me that Danish troops had found buried mortar rounds in southern Iraq just north of Basra which seemed to have traces of or been filled with mustard gas. The Danish or Icelandic links he sent me were a bit difficult for me to make sense of. So I thought I'd wait to see if it got picked up in the English language press.

This sort of munition was used extensively during the Iran-Iraq war. And according to the report they seemed to have been buried for at least ten years and thus likely left over from those hostilities.

The BBC has now picked up the story. But as of 5:30 PM on the east coast a quick look over the English language sites I check most often (CNN, MSNBC, the Times, the Post, Googleness, etc. ) none of them seem to have picked it up.

Needless to say, if confirmed this wouldn't change at all the question of 'whether Iraq had weapons of mass destruction' since they seem to have been buried in a war zone in which it's well-known these weapons were used, and buried there in some small quantity at the time. Equally so, this wouldn't prevent yahoos from insisting on some sort of vindication. But there's not much you can do about yahoos or rhetorical hooligans but keep your own head on straight and let them chatter.

In any case, it'll be interesting to see what the story with these shells ends up being. Just before posting I noticed that several English wires services have now reported on it.