Saddam's offer is transparently phony

Next to no one this side of the United Nations -- or a few German politicians in the heat of their election campaign -- was fooled by the latest ploy of Saddam Hussein in announcing an open-door policy with regard to weapons inspectors.

The ploy was transparent and classic Saddam: Somewhere beyond the 11th hour, with President Bush preparing the world for an attack with regime change as its goal and a weapons and manpower buildup under way in the Persian Gulf, Saddam suddenly agreed to allow in U.N. inspectors -- the same folks he expelled four years ago.

The interesting thing this time is that the ploy is so transparent that even certain credulous sectors of the national news media saw through it.

Even assuming a sincerity no informed observer attributes to Saddam, practical problems abound. To mention just a few: Saddam's offer of an open door doesn't extend to presidential palaces he claims as his own. He has just designated dozens of structures around his prison of a country as new palaces.

A former weapons inspector testifies that, were he to go back into Iraq to conduct inspections, he "would want to control automobile traffic in the streets." Reason: During the 1990s, as inspectors approached an inspection site, there would suddenly develop massive traffic jams, preventing inspectors from getting to their destinations.

And on and on.

Inspecting for nuclear weapons is one thing. It is quite another to attempt inspection for chemical and biological weapons, which are far more easily concealed.

Please, no more charades about phony, last-minute inspections. The evidence of more than a decade argues otherwise.