...and this will?

Or is this another case of "some questions need only be asked?"

Baghdad - Danish troops have found dozens of mortar rounds buried in Iraq which chemical weapons tests show could contain blister gas, the Danish army said yesterday.

The initial tests, which have yet to be confirmed, were taken after Danish troops found 36 120-mm mortar rounds on Friday hidden in southern Iraq. The Danish army said the rounds had been buried for at least 10 years.

They were also damaged and leaking and quite useless.

Let's see. They were found in an area that was a battlefield area during the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war, during which blister gas was used extensively by Iraq. The shells had been buried for at least 10 years.

So I'm prepared to assume they did contain chemical weaponry. However, the logical conclusion is that these are leftovers from the war, sitting under the ground, deteriorating. They certainly weren't part of some craftily-hidden arsenal.

Atrios nailed it:

Weapons of mass destruction have to a) be a weapon, b) be capable of mass destruction.

So is that the way the story will be played, you think? Or will it be "more proof of Saddam's deceptions! We found WMDs! What more do you need?"

Now, I admit I'm being maybe a tad too cynical here, as most news reports - at least in the print and electronic media - do mention when the subject comes up that no WMDs have been found in Iraq. But those references are often down in the body of the article, past where the majority of people read. They rarely make the lead. That's part of the reason why a good number of Americans - a majority, if I recall correctly - believe that WMDs have already been found in Iraq: The "suspicious find" gets played up, the later recanting gets buried.

I'm afraid the same will play out here. The "Chemical weapons! Should have been declared! Hidden!" will get the attention (with a second wind when the test prove positive) and the patent irrelevancy, which will emerge over the following day or two, will be missed by most.

That's the way the game of managing the news is played in a time when image outweighs substance and personality skunks policy: You don't have to suppress the information, you just have to keep it out of the same news cycle and out of the lead.

I'm tempted to go off on a long rant about this, but I've been up all night (insomnia) and I'm really not up for it. Maybe another day.