These were shells buried by previous UN Inspectors apparently.....................
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/021204/1/35etp.html
An International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) team probed the former nuclear centre at al-Tuwaitha, 20 kilometres (13 miles) south of Baghdad, while another from the UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) travelled to the al-Muthanna complex, where Iraq launched its chemical and biological weapons research in 1985.
The UNMOVIC team was able to confirm that a stock of mustard gas shells left at al-Muthanna by its predecessors, who pulled out in 1998, had not been tampered with, its leader Dimitri Perricos said after the four-hour visit.
"We wanted to make sure that the mustard shells which were not destroyed were still there," he told reporters, explaining that the shells had been transferred to the vast desert site by the former UN Special Commission (UNSCOM) in 1998.
"It's a pretty good quantity of mustard. There is no leakage."
Perricos described the interior of the al-Muthanna site where his team secured the shells as "like a moon scene".
"It is there that the most extensive destruction has taken place. That is where most munitions were destroyed," he said referring to the disarmament work of UNSCOM between 1991 and 1998.
So basically they just dug up the remains of the weapons buried by previous inspection teams?