The White House moved quickly Monday night to reject out of hand Saddam Hussein’s latest gambit to avoid a war he has for years been daring the world to wage. The gambit was conveyed as an offer to the United Nations general secretary, Kofi Annan, to admit international arms inspectors without condition. Iraq’s foreign minister put this out as a desire to “remove any doubts” that it still has weapons of mass destruction. It’s hard to imagine the Iraqis conceived of their offer as anything that might be actually accepted by the United Nations, leastwise the United States. No doubt its aim was to excite the likes of Senator Daschle, Foreign Minister Joshkca Fisher, and the editors of the New York Times. Conceivably, the French could go for it.

The White House, however, made it clear that things will not be so simple. It said the situation would require “a new, effective U.N. Security Council resolution that will actually deal with the threat Saddam Hussein poses to the Iraqi people, to the region, and to the world.” That is the course the Security Council is on, the White House said, adding that the United States is engaged in consultations with Council members and other partners in New York at this time. “This is not a matter of inspections. It is about disarmament of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction and the Iraqi regime’s compliance with all other Security Council resolutions.” It dismissed Baghdad’s offer as but “a tactical step by Iraq in hopes of avoiding strong U.N. Security Council action” and called it “a tactic that will fail.”

One has to remember that there has always been a difference between what the Iraqis call “without conditions” and what the Americans see as without conditions. Iraq has never been prepared to permit inspectors to interview anyone whom they please and to bring its interviewees, and their families, out of Iraq and out of the danger of retribution. It has never been prepared to permit inspectors to go anywhere and to do so with lightning speed, by helicopter, without advance notice to the Iraqi regime. Nor has it been prepared to have the inspectors include American personnel, a condition that Saddam was choking on before the whole charade fell apart last time.

Weirdly, Mr. Annan sought last night to put the gloss on the latest Iraqi gambit, crediting Mr. Bush for helping push Iraq toward a renewal of inspections as if that were the issue. “I believe the president’s speech galvanized the international community,” the AP quoted Mr. Annan as saying shortly before the White House rejected the Iraqi scheme. The point everyone seems to be missing is that regime change was set into law well before September 11, 2001, back when the American congress, by overwhelming majorities in both houses, passed the Iraq Liberation Act. America conferred funding and political legitimacy for a free and democratic Iraqi government in exile under the aegis of the Iraqi National Congress. The point that needs to be made now is that it’s not just U.N. resolutions that need to be enforced but America’s own law.