Archive for December 8th, 2006
In today’s Buffalo News, we learn that former Buffalo Police Officer, Gregg O’Shei, was spared a jail sentence for using his position to gain sexual favors.
A former Buffalo police officer who forced at least two women to have sex with him or face being arrested was spared a jail term Thursday.
Gregg O’Shei, 43, told City Judge Craig D. Hannah he wanted to apologize to everyone he has embarrassed by his actions, including his victims. He declined to comment as he left court.
I am troubled by the contradiction in the account of this crime. The two women had a choice of having sex with O’Shei or being arrested. How can someone having a choice claim to have been forced to have sex? They could have chosen to be arrested and not had sex with the Police Officer. Since they chose to have sex, I don’t think they should be able to claim they were forced.
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Two of the main tennants of the recommendations from the Iraq Study Group are being downplayed by President Bush. They are the need for troop withdrawls and diplomacy with Iran and Syria.
The need for a troop withdrawl plan speaks for itself, I’m not even going to get into that now. The failure to establish diplomatic relations with Iran and Syria would prove to be the epitome of Bush’s foreign policy failures. Not only will it make a realistic solution to the problems in the Middle East impossible, it is exactly the type of policy that has led us to the mess that has been created.
But Mr. Bush, making his first extended comments on the study, seemed to push back against two of its most fundamental recommendations: pulling back American combat brigades from Iraq over the next 15 months, and engaging in direct talks with Iran and Syria. He said he needed to be “flexible and realistic” in making decisions about troop movements, and he set conditions for talks with Iran and Syria that neither country was likely to accept.
A viable lasting solution in the Middle East can only be found through diplomacy and interaction on the common ground of free trade. That would lead to a win-win situation for both sides and temper the extreme hostile attitudes that currently exist. The only other lasting solution would result in mass desruction and is not humane. Furthure more, that would lead to more problems with other parts of the world.
But Mr. Bush, and to a lesser extent, Mr. Blair, continued to talk about the war in the kind of sweeping, ideological terms the Iraq Study Group avoided in its report. While the commission settled on stability as a realistic American goal for Iraq, Mr. Bush cast the conflict as part of a broader struggle between good and evil, totalitarianism and democracy.
If extremists emerge triumphant in the Middle East, Mr. Bush warned, “History will look back on our time with unforgiving clarity and demand to know, what happened? How come free nations did not act to preserve the peace?”
Extremists will continue to flourish under the hardline positions advocated by Bush. Extremism can be defeated through diplomacy and trade because the people living in the Middle East will benefit and the call to aid the extremists will be silenced.
“I hope we don’t treat this like a fruit salad and say, ‘I like this but I don’t like that. I like this, but I don’t like that,’ ” Mr. Baker said. “This is a comprehensive strategy designed to deal with this problem we’re facing in Iraq, but also designed to deal with other problems that we face in the region, and to restore America’s standing and credibility in that part of the world.”
Read the rest of the New York Times article here.
