Can't publish this in the American press

[Guest guest]

Published on Sunday. February 27, 2005 by the Toronto

Star

Bush Dodges as Addicts Rot in Jail

Why is the President Punishing Drug Users for

Offences He Has Also

Been Linked to

 

by Joe Conason

 

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.

 

Joe Conason is the author of The Hunting of the

President:The Ten-Year

Campaign to Destroy Bill and Hillary Clinton.

 

 

 

 

 

http://www.blueaction.org

" Better to have one freedom too many than to have one freedom too few. "

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