Our government has spent so much money going after a non-existent chemical arsenal in Iraq that it can no longer afford to dispose of the real thing in Madison County.

Cash-strapped, the Army has suspended design of a weapons-neutralization plant in Colorado, which slows down a similar project at Blue Grass Army Depot near Richmond.

Back when the Army was insisting on building an incinerator in Kentucky, we were routinely warned that continuing to store the aging weapons posed more danger than burning them.

Now that the government has agreed to a safer disposal method, we have to assume that continued storage is much more dangerous than eliminating the weapons -- especially since the dangers now stretch far beyond the area around the depot.

The whole world is at risk from further delays. If the U.S. misses another treaty deadline for destroying chemical weapons, Russia certainly will, too. And the United States will have no standing to prod the Russians to move faster.

The longer an unraveling Russia has chemical arms, the greater the chance that weapons of mass destruction (the real thing) will fall into hostile hands and be used against Americans.

USA Today recently reported that federal audits have found that the military will miss the 2012 treaty deadline extension for eliminating 31,000 tons of nerve gas and skin-blistering agents.

"The Pentagon's struggles to meet destruction deadlines lessens U.S. leverage to press Russia to eliminate its chemical arms, seen by U.S. officials as a proliferation risk," wrote reporter Peter Eisler.

The continued presence of chemical weapons at U.S. sites also poses a terrorist risk, as a citizens advisory panel in Madison County recently noted in sounding an alarm about the likely delay in the Blue Grass project.

The 21-member panel also warned that the Army appears to be setting "an ominous precedent" by shifting money for weapons-neutralization programs, such as the ones here and in Colorado, into weapons-incineration sites.

We join the citizens group in urging Kentucky's delegation in Washington, and the rest of Congress, to keep pushing the Pentagon to eliminate this threat.

As the local panel said in a letter to Sen. Jim Bunning: "While we all understand the budgetary constraints within the Pentagon due to the war in Iraq and other matters, now is not the time to allow our own weapons of mass destruction to languish in American communities. Just the opposite -- now is the time to make quickly and safely ridding U.S. citizens of this grave risk a top priority."