Posted on 02/27/2005 7:50:54 AM PST by rface
No reporter ever asked the Texas governor why all those other people deserved to serve five or 10 or 20 years in prison, when their crimes were no different from what everyone knew he had done, whether he admitted it or not.....Joe Conason wonders why the president is punishing drug users for offences he has also been linked to.
On the audiotapes of George W. Bush recorded secretly by his erstwhile confidant Douglas Wead in 1999, the future president revealed how much he feared candid discussion of his personal use of marijuana and cocaine. As quoted in The New York Times, Bush vowed that no matter what rumours and facts circulated about what he did or might have done, he would doggedly decline to answer forthrightly.
His natural urge to protect his privacy evokes sympathy, however quaint his expectations might be at this point in our political history. But in justifying his refusal to talk about his foolish youth, he appealed to a higher purpose. "I wouldn't answer the marijuana questions," he told Wead. "You know why? Because I don't want some little kid doing what I tried."
For many American parents of a certain age, that self-serving yet poignant response must strike an empathetic chord. Concern that children will mimic parental misbehaviour is universal, and so is the impulse to conceal embarrassing truths. Bush rightly worries that children imitate adult models in the belief that they, too, can escape the consequences.
When Bush uttered those words, he was in his second term as governor of Texas and on his way to the White House. After all, if he could drink too much, smoke those forbidden herbs and perhaps even snort illegal powders and nevertheless become a successful politician, then "some little kid" might reasonably assume he or she could sin likewise without undue risk.
Any such assumption would be terribly mistaken, of course, unless the kid happened to belong to a wealthy and well-connected family like the Bush clan.
Prisons and jails across America are crowded with non-violent drug offenders whose lives have been ruined — and whose families have been damaged or destroyed — by the same punitive legal system that never touched young "Georgie," except to issue him a drunk-driving summons.
The poor and the black are incarcerated for using pot and coke, while the rich and the white lie to their kids (and occasionally to the voters) about those same transgressions.
Certainly that was how the justice system worked when Bush and Wead had their candid chats. The Texas politician couldn't reassure his friend that he hadn't used cocaine, let alone marijuana, but as governor he was imprisoning young people unlucky enough to be arrested in possession of those narcotics, often for draconian mandatory-minimum sentences. He always cherished his image as a tough, swaggering, law-and-order politician who didn't hesitate to imprison teenagers. But that isn't what happens to people from good families.
His niece Noelle Bush went through a drug-rehab program and was released two years ago. His friend Rush Limbaugh went through rehab and has returned to berating the less fortunate on the radio, without doing one day of time.
The lopsided cruelty has only escalated since Bush entered the White House. Federal agents have cracked down on medical users of marijuana, depriving them of a substance that eases their sickness and keeps them alive.
The human and economic costs of the drug war continue to swell. So burdensome are those costs that many conservatives, including such Bush tutors as former secretary of state George Shultz, have publicly pleaded for saner policies.
Despite his claims to be a "compassionate conservative," Bush has ignored those pleas. He seems to feel that if he overcame his substance-abuse problem, then nobody else really has an excuse.
No reporter ever asked the Texas governor why all those other people deserved to serve five or 10 or 20 years in prison, when their crimes were no different from what everyone knew he had done, whether he admitted it or not.
No reporter will ask the president that question today, either, although it is just as pertinent in light of his revealing conversations with Wead.
Indeed, Bush not only avoided public responsibility for his own past mistakes but found a clever way to turn those wayward years to political advantage. He brandishes his late return to sobriety as a symbol of his Christian faith.
It is hard to tell what Bush learned in his recovery from sin, except that other people got caught and he didn't.
That would be enough to make anybody smirk.
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Joe Conason is the author of The Hunting of the President:The Ten-Year Campaign to Destroy Bill and Hillary Clinton.
Right, since the left not only gave Bubba a pass but insisted on it, not much else will signify from now on. But with this angle - Daddy got him off... children of the wealthy etc. - this jerk can indulge his favorite "political" agenda - class warfare.
I read the title and thought someone had posted an article from DU.
I did not know that people who are addicted to drugs are put in jail. I thought that they are put in rehab. I thought that the only ones who are put in jail are the ones who commit crimes or the ones who have enough on them to be charged with intent to distribute.
Joe Conason is a blind pig.
Of course solid evidence that Clintoon had a nose like a Hoover ( per his brother, and numerous credible witnesses) and may have helped smuggle cocaine into the US, now thats somehow lost down the memory hole for the left........
A search of Conason's previous articles show that he has a two track mind.
1. Attacking GW and lying about GW.
2. BS articles which push the rabid gay agenda and attack the sane people challenging the Immoral Insanity of the Gay Agenda.
Below is the search link re Conason and his articles/opeds which push the Immoral Insanity of the Gay Agenda:
http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=Joe+Conason+Gay&ei=UTF-8&pstart=1&b=11
For some reason I get the impression that you agree with Conason and speculate that there's more 'dirt' in the remaining Wead tapes. Got your 'r' face on...that mask you wear on FR?
For once, @ least PART of what Joe sez in this article is right: his criticism of US drug policy. The War on Drugs is an expensive, embarrissing failure, & it has done nothing to slow down the amount of drug use. All it does is increase our prison popultion w/ mostly non-violent people who should have been left alone in the 1st place. It diverts law enforcement time & $ away from fighting REAL crime, especially in these days when we need to be on the lookout for terrorists who are scheming & living among us.
It is HIGH TIME for a major change in our drug laws: the federal government needs to follow the 9th & 10th Amendments & let the states decide how severely to fight drugs or if they decide to do so @ all. Use the $ saved in doing so by beefing up border security to protect us from drugs & illegal immigrants that are coming into our country...& build a wall along our southern border if need be!
He's also a Drag Queen preforming on a off broad way production.
I'm sure one of those guys looks just like him if you take the dress and make up off.
You would be surprised to find out what some people are in prison for were drugs are concerned. But that is a whole other thread. Not all drug users go to rehab.
Conason knows that Canuckistanis will buy this crapola, that's why the article is in the Toronto Star. We should also see reruns of it in Le Monde and Der Spiegle.
Euroweenies love crap and Conason is full of it!!!
Conason insists that, even though nothing can be proven, since "everyone knows" Bush did cocaine, it's hypocritical for Bush to support sentences for people convicted of cocaine possession.
That's really interesting. I guess since "everyone knows" Conason is a liberal lunatic, his charge of rank hypocrisy doesn't quite stick.
In very fact, Conason is an unrepentant, lying clintinoid with nary a fact to back his allegations.
I don't really care whether he did or didn't use cocaine. The point is he doesn't now, nor has he in a long time. If he tried it once - or even twice it doesn't make him a cokehead. I appreciate his brutal honesty in saying it's no one else's business - because it isn't. Far better than lying about it like Slick Willy did.
Funny isn't it how the drug loving left jump on things like this & try & make it an issue. If it's the left's candidate it' no big deal - if it's a Republican it's automatically a scandal. Give me a break.
Not really. It's just that he didn't want to be added to Clinton's secret list - "Dead men ain't gonna tell no more tales."
Thanks, Dave- it had slipped my mind that Ole Joe was a Butt Pirate, too, along with his many other reprehensible qualities.
Generally that's true. Most addicted people don't rot in jail. However, addicted people who commit crimes do rot in jail. Then, they get out, do more coke, do more crimes, then rot in jail some more.
That is a shame. Drug addiction is an illness just like alcoholism.
Very, very few people are in prison for mere possession (of a personal use amount). And if they're in jail, it's for a brief period. Hell, my guess is that they're not even arresting marijuana users in California, much less jailing them.
We are not locking up mere users "to serve five or 10 or 20 years in prison". Those are the hardcore, scumbag drug dealers and traffickers who, IMO, belong there.
If there are inmates in prisons serving that kind of time for mere use of drugs, I'm not aware of it. The ones who get prison time are the drug dealers, and even Conason hasn't quite gotten around to accusing the President of that.
The allegations about Bush and cocaine are false, by the way. He never tried it. I know this because I've had candid discussions with someone in a position to know one way or the other.
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