We went to war in Iraq because of chemical and biological weapons, although we can't say we've actually found any yet.

Now, George W. Bush and his war lieutenants are accusing Syria of having these dreadful weapons, too. The Syrians swear it's a lie. We'll see.

And so it goes in the hunt for weapons of mass destruction on the other side of the world.

Maybe we should be looking in Kentucky instead.

Or Maryland. Or Utah.

Even Hans Blix, the much-maligned UN weapons inspector, could find the bad stuff there.

"While we're searching for these dangerous weapons in other countries, we have eight major stockpiles right here in the United States," Craig Williams was saying yesterday from Berea, Ky., which is in Madison County, a lovely part of the state where the rugged hills of Appalachia meet the rolling bluegrass.

Williams should know. As he spoke, he was sitting 6 miles south of the Bluegrass Army Depot and its 523 tons of nerve-gas weaponry behind high barbed-wire. "I drive by every morning on my way to work," he said.

Not surprisingly, the U.S. government has never gone out of its way to advertise these huge stockpiles. Besides the Bluegrass Depot, they are in Umatilla, Ore.; Tooele, Utah; Pueblo, Colo.; Pine Bluff, Ark.; Anniston, Ala.; Newport, Ind., and Aberdeen, Md.

All together, there are millions - literally, millions - of artillery shells, mortar rounds, bombs and rockets, made even more deadly with high-potency poisons. There are land mines that don't just explode. They sicken. There are spray tanks that can turn an airplane into a lethal crop duster. Some of the weapons are filled with sarin, which is lethal at doses as small as a droplet. Others are spiked with the nerve agents VX or GB, which are stronger still. There are bulk containers filled with ancient mustard gas, which was used to such brutal effect during the trench warfare of World War I.

"The vast majority of American citizens don't realize we have chemical weapons stored all across the country," Williams said.

And none of it is going anywhere fast.

An international chemical weapons treaty, ratified by the Senate in 1997, commits the United States to destroy it all by 2007, although Department of Defense officials have begun saying privately they'll have trouble meeting that deadline. Russia has already said it will seek a five-year extension, and the United States is expected to ask for one, too.

In the meantime, this awful stuff just waits.

Workers at several of the chemical-weapons depots have filed lawsuits against the Army, claiming they've been injured by accidental exposures. So have the depots' neighbors. And the ragtag Chemical Weapons Working Group, which is based in Berea and has Williams as its director, has filed a lawsuit against the federal government, trying to force the Army to use "neutralizing agents" to destroy the weapons - instead of simply burning them.

There hasn't been an accident yet. But the mind does wander at a time like this. And not just to the possibility of earthquakes and meteorites. The threat of terrorism has led to stepped-up security at several of the sites.

And what about accidents?

Between 1990 and 2000, according to a study last year by the National Academy of Sciences, the U.S. chemical depots suffered several hundred leaks of nerve agents and mustard gas. "As long as they are there, we have risk," Craig Williams said.

The rockets are the diciest, everyone agrees.

As they age, they become less stable. There is the possibility one could accidentally detonate, triggering an explosion inside a bunker that could shoot a toxic cloud straight into the sky.

"When the Russians stored their rockets," William said, "they stored the nerve agents in one igloo and propellants in another. They had to be put together before they could be used. We stored ours together in a single igloo, which you'd have to say was a little shortsighted, if not downright suicidal."

Under pressure from the local activists and threat of lawsuits, the Army has agreed not to incinerate at four of the eight depots, using the safer methods instead. But the burning has already begun, intermittently, at the base in Utah. It is still scheduled to start later this year in Alabama, Arkansas and Oregon.

"We're hoping to stop it," William said.

So now, public attention turns to Syria, as American troops continue their hunt for forbidden weapons in Iraq.

Bush and Donald Rumsfeld and Colin Powell are wagging their fingers at Damascus. And the stockpiles still wait on the home front.

Here's hoping the Syrians don't ask: "But what about yours?"

Copyright © 2003, Newsday, Inc.

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