The trouble with puppets

We all know how Saddam Hussein was once a US puppet but cut his strings. We reported below that the new Iraqi puppets have signed a military training pact with an arch enemy of the Bush administration, Iran. Now, via Brilliant at Breakfast, we hear that another old Iraqi puppet is telling the world that this is the start of civil war contradicting the rosy picture the Bush administration is trying to paint.

IRAQ'S former interim prime minister Iyad Allawi has warned that his country is facing civil war and has predicted dire consequences for Europe and America as well as the Middle East if the crisis is not resolved.
"The problem is that the Americans have no vision and no clear policy on how to go about in Iraq," said Allawi, a long-time ally of Washington.

In an interview with The Sunday Times last week as he visited Amman, the Jordanian capital, he said: "The policy should be of building national unity in Iraq. Without this we will most certainly slip into a civil war. We are practically in stage one of a civil war as we speak."

Allawi, a secular Shi'ite, said that Iraq had collapsed as a state and needed to be rebuilt. The only way forward, he said, was through "national unity, the building of institutions, the economy and a firm but peaceful foreign relation policy". Unless these criteria were satisfied, "the country will deteriorate".

So I guess that means it's only "Mission Accomplished" if your intent was to spawn civil war and chaos. When your puppet says you totally screwed it up you must have really screwed it up.