Asa Jay's weblog

In an article I read this morning, North Korea suggests that it can strike the Unites States first. What North Korea is suggesting, is that it holds just as much pre-emptive authority to strike a nation, as the U.S. does. How did this happen? How is it that another nation now looks to pre-emptive action as a viable political tool? The answer is simple really, when one of the worlds most leading nations indicates acceptable foreign policy through it’s actions, the world will take note. North Korea has been paying attention to how the U.S. has been metering out it’s foreign policy as of late.

I don’t want to sound as though I don’t support our administration, or support our military forces overseas, because I do; however, I do think we may have made a mistake and as the years pass by, we are beginning to see the fallout of our actions in Iraq. Our doctrine of self-defense changed when it was decided the U.S. would pre-emptively strike Iraq. No longer was it a doctrine of striking back, it was a doctrine of striking first. Instead of turning the other cheek, or taking an eye for an eye, we are now the ones to poke the other in the eye first.

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I have a wonderful wife, who likes to get me nice things.  This year, she knew of many different items I “wanted” but didn’t really need.  One of those at the top of my list was a good telescope.

After Christmas last year, I had a couple of friends who ended up with new telescopes and I have to admit I was a bit jealous.  I’ve had a passion for space since I was a little kid and I just could never really see much using binoculars or small telescopes.  Mind you, I’ve not been interested in much Astronomy, but I would like to be able to get out and enjoy the stars a little more, get a little closer to some of those constellations I can’t see too well, things like that.

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To be exact, March 2 is my birthday, which is tomorrow.  I’m past 40 now, going on 42.  I didn’t get married until I was 34, and didn’t have a child until I was 39.  I’ve owned my 1971 Mach I Mustang for 20 years, that’s more than half it’s life to date.  I have my own home, my wife and I built it ourselves, with a little help, in 2002 moving in at the end of 2003.  I have a good job, it pays well and doesn’t create a lot of stress all the time.  I’m again going to school, aiming for a Bachelors in Organizational Management.  I’m doing okay.

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I’ve had a blog on MSN Spaces for quite some time, though I really don’t use it. Today when I went there just to see if my blog was still there, I thought I had accidentally been re-directed to an Ubuntu website. What? Hmmm, yea, interesting.

If you look at the new logo for MSN Spaces, you’ll see it has a remarkable resemblance to the logo for Ubuntu. It’s so similar in fact, that I’m sure there is a case for copyright or trademark infringement here, the only questions being who was there first, or has it been trademarked?

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I don’t know that you could call me a voracious news reader; however, I do read a lot of news and today I stumbled on this gem from BBC News which talks about Saddam Hussein predicting terror attacks on America and Great Britian. The entire Iraq invasion has driven a wedge among the people of the United States. Nearly three years into the liberation/occupation, there are people either strongly for it, or strongly against it.

At one point in time I had played some devil’s advocate scenarios in my head. One of those ideas went something like this:
What if Saddam didn’t really know about the weapons programs allegedly taking place in Iraq? Maybe it was generals or others underneath him who were building these things up, keeping a buffer of safety between the programs and the dictator to keep him out of trouble. Perhaps he was totally unaware, perhaps he was telling the truth. Or at least maybe he was telling the truth about having dismantled everything, that there were no programs still in place, that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction.

There are two things that come out of this article, the first that Hussein had clairvoyant knowledge of terror attacks that would happen in the US and Britain, and the second being that he knew about weapons programs and was actively hiding them. My postulations were rather incorrect, what was my first instinctual reactions were more true, that Hussein -was- up to something, and -was- a danger.

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