WHAT DO YOU HAVE TO SAY ABOUT THIS REPORT, HANS?

About 30 Iraqi troops, including a general, surrendered today to US forces of the 3rd Infantry Division as they overtook huge installation apparently used to produce chemical weapons in An Najaf, some 250 kilometers south of Baghdad. . . .

It wasn’t immediately clear exactly which chemicals were being produced here, but clearly the Iraqis tried to camouflage the facility so it could not be photographed aerially, by swathing it in sand-cast walls to make it look like the surrounding desert.

Stay tuned, but this looks like another Blix embarrassment, following upon the Scuds that weren’t supposed to be there.

UPDATE: A couple of readers say that MSNBC is reporting (on TV) that this story is false. I can’t find anything about it on the website at the moment. As I said, stay tuned.

ANOTHER UPDATE: This story from Fox, this story from ABC news, and this story from Agence France Presse say that there was a chemical weapons factory found. I suppose that could change, but for now the story seems reasonably credible.