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So much attention has been focused lately on the search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq that it overshadowed the recent search for WMD in Hernando County.
This summer, the U.S. government raised dire warnings that there may be stores of mustard gas hidden away at the Hernando County Airport.
Much like the prelude to the war in Iraq, the government sent inspectors to snoop out the stuff, which apparently had been dumped there following military training exercises during World War II.
Many of us who live in Spring Hill, Brooksville and Masaryktown - the so-called "Baptist triangle" - feared that if we didn't cooperate with the inspectors, the Bush administration might consider it grounds for war.
After all, President Bush has taken a hard line with people who possess chemical or biological weapons. Now that we have this doctrine of pre-emptive war, there was growing fear that Dick Cheney, Don Rumsfeld and the boys might decide Hernando County needs to be neutralized.
Already, Secretary of State Colin Powell was preparing to go to the United Nations to make his case for an invasion.
His staff was putting together a display of satellite images shot from high above Hernando County that would purportedly show a series of long, metallic structures near the airport.
People inside the Bush administration were convinced these were weapons labs - capable of producing nasty substances like anthrax, smallpox and VX nerve gas.
We kept trying to tell them these were chicken houses, but they accused us of a "pattern of deception" and said we weren't to be trusted. Besides, they said, anything that creates that kind of odor must be lethal.
Who could argue?
Speech writers in the White House were preparing the text for the president's next address to the nation. Sources say they were going to include a line accusing Hernando County of trying to obtain uranium yellow cake from Niger.
The CIA raised a fuss about including such a claim in the president's speech. They said the White House mistook what the CIA's spies were reporting - that folks in Hernando County were seeking funnel cake. And that we had gone to Plant City looking for it.
Of course, once the war hawks make up their minds, there's no letting facts get in the way of a good war. We began getting reports that troops were amassing to the south of us, just across the Pasco County line, and that an invasion was only days away.
We were heartened to hear that our good neighbors to the north in Citrus County refused, much like the Turkish parliament, to allow their territory to be used for an invasion.
But I don't think the people in Citrus were being good neighbors so much as they were looking for an ally, as everyone knows Citrus County has its own nuclear weapons program up there in Crystal River.
Our deliverance from this threat of war came only after one of the lead inspectors at the airport, Robert Bridgers, declared: "We have not found anything we thought might be there, nothing related to chemical warfare."
He went on to say - and I am not making up these quotes - "We have recovered a lot of scrap wire, various pieces of metal debris and the grille off an old car."
Some of the hard-line neo-cons in the White House argued for an invasion anyway. They said the 127 canisters of mustard gas supposedly dumped at the airport at the end of WWII couldn't just rot after only 58 short years of being buried in the soil and being subjected to intense summer heat and frequent rains.
Just as they figured Saddam must have stashed his weapons under the sands of Iraq, the war hawks reasoned that canisters of mustard gas must still lie beneath the sands of Spring Hill.
Fortunately, polls showed that only a slim majority of Americans supported a war on Hernando County. Cooler heads in the White House prevailed, and the invasion force was told to stand down.
Yep, Americans can rest easy now. The inspections proved that there is about as much WMD in Hernando County as there is in Iraq.
- Robert King can be reached at 848-1432. Send e-mail to rking@sptimes.com