U.S. Marines have uncovered what is believed to be weapons-grade plutonium.

U.S. Marines have located a complex of tunnels underneath an Iraqi nuclear complex--apparently missed by U.N. weapons inspectors--discovering a vast array of warehouses and bombproof offices that could contain the "smoking gun" sought by intelligence agencies, reported the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. [...] Chief Warrant Officer Darrin Flick, the battalion's nuclear, biological and chemical warfare specialist, said radiation levels were particularly high at a place near the complex where local residents say the "missile water" is stored in mammoth caverns. "It's amazing," Flick said. "I went to the off-site storage buildings, and the rad detector went off the charts. Then I opened the steel door, and there were all these drums, many, many drums, of highly radioactive material."

More proof of an increasingly incompetent and irrelevant U.N.? Or perfectly innocent?

This underground discovery could still test to be perfectly legitimate and offer no proof of chemical, biological or nuclear weapons. The CIA encouraged international inspectors in the fall of 2002 to probe Al Tuwaitha for weapons of mass destruction, and the inspectors came away empty-handed.

Time will tell as the materials are tested.