Dear Mr. Ahmadinejad: Thanks, but no thanks.

Dear Sir,

I appreciate your cordial invitation to spend my vacation in sunny Iran, touring your nuclear facilities to see for myself that they are being used for peaceful purposes, but I am afraid I must decline your generous offer on three counts.

First, I understand your fingerprinting requirement is a sort of tit-for-tat for our government's insistence on fingerprinting your citizens when they visit our country. I recognize why you're doing it, but it's still a little creepy. I don't like it from my own government, much less from a government that has a Bureau of Public Beheadings. Also, in fairness, how many Americans have wandered into your public spaces wearing Semtex skivvies and blown themselves to Pat Robertson in the belief that it will make them a martyr and earn them 72 fixed rate mortgages and a Porsche Boxster in some secular Western afterlife?

Secondly, while I consider myself fairly bright, I'm not likely to be headhunted by Raytheon to design the next generation of nukyular warheads, if you know what I mean. Those could be fuel rods for a civilian reactor, warhead parts, or bits of a moon rocket you're showing me, and I wouldn't be able to tell the difference, so my eyewitness testimony is unlikely to do you any good in the court of public opinion.

Lastly, and please don't take this the wrong way, but I doubt my insurance underwriters would take anything but a dim view of me lollygagging around ground zero your peaceful nuclear research facilities. It'd kinda give me the creeping willies, too, because I'd feel like I had a JDAM targeted at my noggin. Also, while Persian hospitality is legendary, you have to admit that your countrymen have shown a willingness to take mine hostage before and, frankly, I don't look all that hot in a blindfold.

So, I appreciate your offer, but it looks like I'll be skipping the tour of Natanz, and going to Dollywood as originally planned, instead.

Sincerely,

Tamara K.