My theory is that Cheney, Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld, Perle, Feith and other neocons called George Tenet in after 9/11 and said to him "Look, we can make you the scapegoat. You're a holdover from the Clinton Administration. We'll say the CIA blew it and that's why the country was attacked. We'll blame it on you and Clinton; we'll fire you in disgrace and if that happens, you won't get any cushy job with private security firms; you won't be able to become a multimillion dollar a year consultant for lobbyists and industries. You'll be nothing..."

"BUT... we have an alternative proposal for you. We want to go into Iraq. We've got the plans all drawn up, the thing is ready to go. What we need is intelligence evidence tying Saddam Hussein to the 9/11 attacks. You do that -- you get your people to give us intelligence we want and quash the intelligence we don't want -- and your ass is saved. Hell, we might even give you a medal!"

And I believe that is why Tenet went along with them. Now he wants to sell a book for several million dollars, so all he needs to do is get publicity. How does he do that? Why, he just issues a press release claiming to "clarify" statements he made before the war. His claims are sure to be sensational, so this will guarantee front page coverage on everything from the NY Times to Salon.com.

It's all a game. He's in on it, as are so many others are who have their own multimillion dollar book deals in the works. The administration isn't genuinely pissed at him for making his claims, they know it's all a publicity stunt and they're playing along by pretending to be hurt.

They're all very good at publicity stunts.

They're good at all sorts of stunts, no?

Rupert Murdoch is an American in name only. He would never have become an American citizen if he had been allowed to buy up our media as a foreigner.

I don't understand the horror people have because other people have had plastic surgery. I live in the Hamptons. Try finding an un-lipo'd thigh or a wrinkled brow. Today is the first day of the summer season. I went to my local garden center and was confronted with a woman who had had something done to the space between her nose and her upper lip. The spot that becomes wrinkled on older women. It had been lasered or chemically peeled or something, but it looked tight as a drumskin and was shiny white. Hey, she paid for it with her own money, she likes it better than wrinkles, what do I care? I blink, look away, acclimatize myself to the odd appearance of her... lip-space thing .. and life goes on.

I know people who tut-tut breast implants in public who actualy have breast implants themselves. Me, I like Botox. I fully admit I've had Botox and when people say to me "But you don't have any wrinkles!" I say "Then the Botox is working pretty well, isn't it?" I can move my eyebrows, my forehead isn't frozen - doctors have had several years of practice at injecting Botox nowadays; the "frozen forehead" is a corny sitcom joke that TV writers (who have all had Botox) make for cheap laughs.

I used to work in Manhattan hospitals. I worked with some of the world's top plastic surgeons. Believe me, when your favorite star looks strikingly young for his or her age, you can bank on it that s/he has had work done. They've all had it done.. I know, I was there and saw them!

So if a lady wants to wear a pair of pants without having to wear a below-the-crotch sweatshirt to cover her middle-aged camel toe and she feels the only way for that to happen is to have a labiaplasty, I won't hold it against her. It's her real estate, not mine. People obsess about all manner of body parts you and I may never even notice. As long as they are using their own money, their kids aren't going hungry and they fully understand the surgical risks involved, go for it. If they want to shave an inch or two off their labs, who am I to disapprove?

I have no idea how my labiaplasty letter wound up here in the Afghanistan section. Make of it what you will (and remove it if you can, please)

I am a gardener and I love my bees. The past 2 years, though, I've noticed a real decline in my bumble bees. This is unusual, since I now have even more plants they enjoy than I had several years ago. Giant catmint, lavender, hyssop, sedum, Joe Pye weed, bergamot, butterfly bushes, summersweet.... far more bee-pleasing plants than I had in the past.

Not only do I notice fewer numbers, but I notice some of the ones I have seem unhealthy. You know how bees slow down at the end of summer, and seem paralyzed because they are at the end of their life cycle? Well, I am seeing that behavior in some bumble bees in early and midsummer. I can reach right down and pick them up, and they crawl on my hand as if they are dizzy and then fall off my hand.

I've never noticed that before. I have been gardening for 12 years. I noticed it in the summer of 2005 and 2006. It is too early in the season to observe this year's bees, since most of my plants haven't flowered yet.