Replies

"Not only did I hear him say if anyone comes forward to say he did coke they'd be lying, but that is how several other respected people have interpreted his comments, too."

Look, you made some snide comment about how you are capable of reading a transcript, insinuating I guess that I am too stupid to do so. I asked you to please produce the thing so that I could read it too. You did not. Now you expect me to take what you say at face value. I'm not going to do it.

"He did not ever directly take on the drug question, but he did give, in 1999, a 25 year window of saying there was nothing since that time."

I don't believe that he ever did give a 25 year window. I think he was very cryptic and coy about it and you could have interpreted what he actually said a bunch of different ways.

"There is nothing at all that indicates he did coke. Yes, you can hypothesize it was possible, but there is no witness, there were no hints, and now we have the tapes where he says if somebody shows up it will be made up."

I don't know. He's really left the question open. There has been a lot of rumor and speculation and he refuses to deny having used the drug. He's made some cryptic comments about how he could have passed government background tests which depending upon how you interpret what he said and depending on what time frame he was alluding to could have meant that if he used hard drugs he hadn't used in 25 years or it could have meant he hadn't used in something like 7 years. In the tapes he apparently said:

"GEORGE BUSH: (inaudible) it doesn't matter – cocaine, it'd be the same with marijuana. I wouldn't answer the marijuana question.

DOUG WEAD: Uh-hunh.

GEORGE BUSH: Do you know why? Because I don't want some little kid doin' what I tried.

DOUG WEAD: Yeah, and it never stops, the question.

GEORGE BUSH: But you gotta understand, I want to be President, I want to lead, I want to set… do you want your little kid to say hey Daddy, President Bush tried marijuana, I think I will?"

He could have been hinting there that he might have done cocaine. Maybe not. Unfortunately I can't find any transcripts of the tapes, only little snippets here and there. From what I have seen at least though there is no denial. He hasn't denied that he's ever used cocaine. There is certainly not enough for someone to declare as fact that he has used the drug, but on the other hand he has never denied having used the drug at some point in his past despite having been asked about it several times. It would be equally wrong to declare as fact that the man has never used the drug.

This really isn't worth arguing over. You don't think the president ever used cocaine. My suspicion is that he has used it before. Neither of us have much to back up our assertions. Maybe he did. Maybe he didn't. It's not all that important.

I don't believe that he ever did give a 25 year window.

Well, I remember when it happened and here's a lib source confirming my statement.

Bush's Drug Hypocrisy

excerpt:

"As I understand it", Bush told a press conference, "the current [FBI] form asks the question, `Did somebody use drugs in the last seven years?' and I will be glad to answer that question and the answer is No." Taking him at his word, this meant that Bush had not used drugs since 1992.

The following day, Bush shifted the boundary back farther, stating that, at the time his father was inaugurated as president in 1989, he would have passed the background check that was then in force, which required a statement that the subject of the check had not used drugs in the previous 15 years.

He was saying, in other words, that he had not used drugs since 1974. And this, essentially, is his final word on the matter.

~snip~

Furthermore, here is the part of the tape on cocaine:

In Secretly Taped Conversations, Glimpses of the Future President

excerpt:

He worried, though, that allegations of cocaine use would surface in the campaign, and he blamed his opponents for stirring rumors. "If nobody shows up, there's no story," he told Mr. Wead, "and if somebody shows up, it is going to be made up." But when Mr. Wead said that Mr. Bush had in the past publicly denied using cocaine, Mr. Bush replied, "I haven't denied anything."

~snip~