Can you? I know that Cubase is a program that definitely supports VST plugs, since it's steinberg's technology, but you need to look and see if cool edit can even support them. you might be limited to directX plugs or something like that.
Edit: A brief moment of sanity brought an idea to mind...
Okay, try this... There should be a subgroup in your Cubase folder that is labeled by default as vstplugins.
(Example: Start->Program Files->Steinberg->Cubase->vstplugins->*all the vst .dll files*)
Cool edit may have the same folder architecture as this. You could try copying the .dll's to the Cool edit plugin folder and see what happens.
If you are talking about using the VST's that came with Cubase, I don't think you can. I recall trying to do the same once and just got the message "You need cubase to use this plug-in".
Yeah, most plugins that ship with cubase are cubase only. I've tried loading them in different sequencers (Traktion, Live e.a.) but I always get the "you need cubase" message.