Soldiers find weapons caches on Euphrates island

"Heck, in the past 5 years I've seen at least one article on U.S. civil war ordnance (C.S.A.) from the 1860's being discovered in the South!"

Understand. Sadly this time around much of the stuff may have been buried prior to the invasion for supporting the Saddamist resitance. One things for sure having an estimate forth or fifth largest ordanance supply of all nations they sure have a lot of stuff still probably still buried. Let alone what may be buried in the form of chemical pre-cursors for nerve gas etc..

"What I can't figure out is how they got there and when they were established. Is it all Iraqi army surplus, or trucked in? Again - how and when?"

I think we have to bear in mind, Saddam over those fifteen years procured huge amounts of stuff from the EU, Russia, and Russian satelites. He had the oil to use as a bargaining chip. And I am sure he made sure whatever was used during their war with Iran, was replaced and added unto over a long period of time.
Over the past few years on occasions we have encountered articles indicating prior to and just after the invasion, Iraqi special army units where relocating large caches throughout Iraq. For example, a school would be told to not allow children to come to the school for lets say three days.
Upon returning to the school. One would see a large concrete cap in the play ground that was not there before. We have to bear in mind Saddam made it clear that if we invaded there would be a price to pay. And clearly he eluded to a long term resistance effort that would take place. So naturally it is fair to assume they where buring stuff up the gazo, in order to wage a long insurgency.
And we must remember the "looting binges" that went on after the tanks rolled into the capital. We did not send huge numbers of conquering forces into the thousands of towns and cities throughout Iraq. So this left the door open for Saddam's goons to convoy stuff from armories and ordnance depots for burial elsewhere. Apparently while our troops where invading and prior to the invasion, Saddam's units where busy preparing for a follow up insurgency. And when one considers the literally hundreds of depots they had, it would have been impossible regardless of the number of troops sent in to in any way stop them from relocating stuff to hidden sites.

" But I'm still blown away by the quantity we've recovered."

Yes. Just think 600,000 tons of bombs, rockets, mortar rounds. It takes four 500lbs to make a ton. Perhaps 1000 rockets, 1200 plus mortar shells. The EU sold Iraq literally hundreds of thousands of tons of ordance over an extended period of time. Those French 155mm artillery shells they now use for making IED's, filled ordnance depots to the brim. And perhaps as much as a quarter of the stuff is still buried, hidden in buildings etc..
It is going to take a long time to rid the country of stuff that they can no longer use in their new army.

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