Ajax has drag and drop capabilities to match Flash.
It seems that pretty much everything you can do in one, you can do in the other.

So which do you think is the better option for Rich Media Applications?

IMO, JavaScript is more accessible and maintainable than Flash.

id say javascript as well on my machine atleast flash tends to run quite slowly.

Not sure how old your computer is, but Flash is way faster for certain types of animation on most machines. It totally depends on your needs. As VirtuosiMedia pointed out, JS is much more accessible. This is one reason I would choose it. Another reason is just that HTML activated with JavaScript is a more natural part of the page, and is easier to manage from a database. Virtually all of the sites I build these days are managed from a database, so having content that is a part of the natural flow of things makes a huge difference.

There are some exceptions to that (like this), and I don't mean to say that Flash is totally unmanageable, but I find that using it is the exception rather than the rule.

Flash is good for playing movies or MP3s! I haven't found a way to do that with JavaScript yet!