Chris Briddick

It’s March Madness!

What happened to the University of Kentucky?

Thankfully, at the writing of this piece, my old school Vanderbilt remains at the dance, much to the disbelief of alums and common citizenry of the SEC alike.

Go Dores!

But the Blue Grass state is not just known for fielding really great basketball teams.

A few miles down the road from Lexington there is an often-overlooked roster of sorts, awaiting another heated competition, a different kind of March Madness if you will. In fact, if you wanted to have a tournament, Kentucky might be seeded #1 again going in.

I am talking of course about a tournament of weaponry. You know Weapons of Mass Destruction? Those elusive nasty explosives that were going to get Dubya re-elected providing they could be located?

Just outside of Lexington is the town of Richmond, Ky., home of Eastern Kentucky University, another not so shabby basketball program and next door neighbor to the Blue Grass Chemical Stockpile.

The BGCS would be our best bet should a worldwide Final Four competition ever involve chemical weapons.

The BGCS has M55 Rockets, some 51,716 of them weighing 553,360 pounds filled with GB-Nerve gas; 17,733 M55 Rockets weighing 177,340 pounds filled with VX-Nerve gas; 12,816 155mm Projectiles weighing 76,900 pounds and filled with VX-Nerve gas; 8-inch projectiles, all 3,977 of them weighing in at 57,660 pounds, filled to the gills with GB-Nerve gas; 155mm Projectiles of HD-Blister — good ol’ fashioned Mustard Gas — 15,492 of ’em at 181,260 pounds, hardly lethal but enough to make entire cities feel as if they have been maced from head to toe.

Barely worth mentioning are the M56 Rocket Warheads, all 24 of ’em, weighing in at a measly 260 pounds stocked with GB-Nerve gas and the M56 Rocket Warheads, all 6 of ’em, weighing in at a scrappy 60 pounds stocked with VX-Nerve gas.

When all this madness settles down, let’s remind our politicians that WMDs in anyone’s hands, be it an evil dictator or a superpower democracy, are bad, bad things.

The good news is that there is talk of disposing of them, but the government’s idea of that is a large incinerator and so far the people in that immediate area have been resistant in signing on to that plan.

Can’t imagine why they would oppose incinerating Weapons of Mass Destruction in their own back yard?

When our troops are back home and out of harm’s way, let’s make it a point to remember that while they didn’t find WMDs in Iraq, the Blue Grass state has WMDs to burn … well not exactly but you get the idea.

It kind of sets a bad example to have almost a million pounds of this stuff in one location (there are other stockpiles across the nation) and to bomb another country where not a one of these has been found.

Enjoy the rest of the madness March brings.

Perhaps April will bring peace and discovery of our own hypocrisy.