Washington needs
a hotline to Tehran

We have a deadly game of chicken escalating in the Mideast that could lead us into another unnecessary war.

The main protagonists are Iran and Israel, with the U.S. to be dragged in by the latter.

In this country, we have the usual cheering section for war: the right-wing hawks, the military industrial complex and the extreme religious fundamentalists itching for Armageddon and a quick trip to paradise.

It sounds eerily like the same ingredients that President George W. Bush used to take us into Iraq; except this time, we can add a nuclear holocaust.

Have we learned nothing from Iraq and Afghanistan?

I don’t know what the best resolution is for this insanity, but for starters, what about a hotline between Washington and Tehran? That helped us avoid World War III with Russia.

W.D. CLARKSON

CHECK

Restore postal service
to its rightful place

Plans being announced by the corporate U.S. Postal Service to close facilities in Roanoke and Lynchburg are bad news.

It’s high time to restore the postal service to its constitutional place, funded, like our highways, as a government expense. It should never have been structured as a corporation, viewed as a profit-or-loss entity.

The Constitution recognized the post office as being as essential as highways.

Every time a government duty and service is contracted out, that duty and service suffers. The first objective of the contractor is his own profit.

But when government staff has the funds to spend and no concern for profit, that duty and service is performed.

Congress, disband the U.S. Postal Service corporation and restore the United States Post Office to its rightful place as an entity of government, funded from an item in the budget.

GARLAND CAMPBELL

DUBLIN

Weather Journal

13 hours ago