17 December 2008

Jean Chretien is secretly a mathematician?


"I don't know. A proof is a proof. What kind of a proof? It's a proof. A proof is a proof, and when you have a good proof, it's because it's proven."
-- Jean Chretien, former prime minister of Canada. The context appears to be something having to do with Canada's involvement in the Iraq war, but I'm having trouble finding details. It seems that this was a Big Thing in Canada when it happened, so perhaps I have Canadian readers who can explain?

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

This reminds me of one of my favorite Bushisms:

"Tribal sovereignty means that... it's sovereign. You're a... you've been given sovereignty, and you're viewed as a sovereign entity. [restrained laughter]"

Anonymous said...

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Jean_Chretien

Anonymous said...

If I'm not wrong, this was when the US was going to war in Iraq and Chretien refused to involve Canada by saying that there was not enough proof of WMDs in Iraq.

Anonymous said...

Canada sent troops to Afghanistan and then said "Oops, we have no more troops to send to Iraq".

I don't remember that quote in particular, but Jean Chretien did provide lots of quotes.

andy said...

This is way late, but yes, Chris is right. It had nothing to do with 'no more troops' and everything to do with our government's position that it was an unjust war.