The Rant

by Bob Clasen What motivates the State Department, the CIA or the Department of Defense to do their jobs competently and efficiently? They have no competition. Their main task it to keep their jobs and cover up mistakes. The experience of the past four years is that they are not very competent. People in other countries do not participate in our government. They do not vote and cannot sue our government about a war. What motivation does our government have to reduce civilian casualties or to treat them justly? Very little, sad to say. Why should we expect that our military is any more efficient than the post office, or the Department of Roads and Highways or the IRS? They have no competition. There is no market pressure forcing them towards efficiency. Unlike market based decisions which are based upon millions of consumer choices, the decision to go to war is usually in the hands of a cabal of "experts" (currently the neocons) who disagree with oth

Iran calls for Israel’s “elimination” Thu. 03 Aug 2006 Iran Focus Tehran, Iran, Aug. 03 – Hard-line Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called on Thursday for the “elimination” of Israel. Ahmadinejad was speaking at an emergency session of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC) in Putrajaya, Malaysia, which had been organised to discuss Israeli attacks in Lebanon. His remarks were carried in full by the state-run news agency ISNA. He described the Jewish state as “fake” and said that it lacked any “legal foundation or legitimacy”. “The United States and Britain and a considerable number of Western government do not have any limits on the extent of their political, propaganda, financial, and military backing for this regime”, he said. He said the Lebanese militia Hezbollah, which has been in intense battle with Israel over the past three weeks, had become the “symbol of Muslim resistance”. “The main solution is the elimination of the Zionist regime”, Ahmadinejad said. He cal