Bush Admits to Smoking Pot

WASHINGTON,
Feb. 19 – As George W. Bush was first moving onto the national political
stage, he often turned for advice to an old friend who secretly taped
some of their private conversations, creating a rare record of the future
president as a politician and a personality.

In the last several weeks, that friend, Doug Wead, an author and former
aide to Mr. Bush’s father, disclosed the tapes’ existence to a reporter
and played about a dozen of them.

Mr. Bush, who has acknowledged a drinking problem years ago, told Mr.
Wead on the tapes that he could withstand scrutiny of his past. He said
it involved nothing more than "just, you know, wild behavior." 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."

He refused to answer reporters’ questions about his past behavior, he said, even
though it might cost him the election. Defending his approach, Mr. Bush said: "I
wouldn’t answer the marijuana questions. You know why? Because I don’t want some
little kid doing what I tried."

Could his disinclination to answer the marijuana questions be related
to the "vision thing"? Is it acceptable for a US President who is embarassed
or ashamed by past illegal activity to simply refuse to answer questions
on the topic? OK, he got away with it, and in retrospect it was obviously
the "smart" thing to do, but was it RIGHT? Was it LEGAL? Is it IMPEACHABLE?

from the
New York Times