Dear President Ahmadinejad,

I'm sorry, I have not been able to make time to read your letter.

Since I rarely have the time to listen to all of the speeches of my own country's
president, let alone watch the two or three channels of 24-hour broadcast from the national legislature or the published minutes of the state legislature, the county commishioners, the school board, the town council... you can see that I am
very far behind in my correspondence.

I hear on NPR that you are interested in developing nuclear weapons. My advice would be to skip it. From my little knowledge of history, the only use of nuclear weapons so far has been widely misunderstood and castigated. Everyone else who has built one has been afraid to use it. So at minimum it is a waste of time and money. I also heard that you deny that you really want a nuclear weapon. That puzzles me, since having one is only useful if everyone knows you've got it. And working on one is only effective if everyone knows about it. Fortunately, NPR knows.

Well, good luck with your next elections. I hear that bombastic anti-semitism is still a good campaign tactic over there. We have similar issues over here. But it's a lot easier to make a good bombastic speech than it is to keep the garbage men from going on strike, if you know what I mean.

Sincerely,

Chris

p.s. I started reading "Reading Lolita in Tehran" but my daughter wanted it back before I could finish it.