From the NYT archives:

By my estimate, Iraq’s election day is the fifth time that American troops have been almost on their way home from an about-to-be pacified Iraq. The four other incipient V-I days were the liberation of Baghdad (April 9, 2003), President Bush’s declaration that ‘’major combat operations have ended’’ (May 1, 2003), the arrest of Saddam Hussein (Dec. 14, 2003) and the handover of sovereignty to our puppet of choice, Ayad Allawi (June 28, 2004).
– FRANK RICH; NYT; January 30, 2005 Sunday; Editorial Desk; Late Edition – FinalBut when Mr. Allawi proposed an amnesty for insurgents — a move that was obviously calculated to show that he wasn’t an American puppet — American officials, probably concerned about how it would look at home, stepped in to insist that insurgents who have killed Americans be excluded. Inevitably, this suggestion that American lives matter more than Iraqi lives led to an unraveling of the whole thing, so Mr. Allawi now looks like a puppet. – PAUL KRUGMAN; NYT; August 6, 2004 Friday; Editorial Desk; Late Edition – FinalFor so long, Mr. Bush has put up with caricatures of a wee W. sitting in the vice president’s lap, Charlie McCarthy style, as big Dick Cheney calls the shots. But now the president has his own puppet to play with. All last week in New York and Washington, Prime Minister Ayad Allawi of Iraq parroted Mr. Bush’s absurd claims that the fighting in Iraq was an essential part of the U.S. battle against terrorists that started on 9/11, that the neocons’ utopian dream of turning Iraq into a modern democracy was going swimmingly, and that the worse things got over there, the better they really were. – MAUREEN DOWD; NYT; September 26, 2004 Sunday; Editorial Desk; Late Edition – FinalPrime Minister Iyad Allawi on Tuesday signed into law broad martial powers that allow him to impose curfews anywhere in the country, ban groups he considers seditious and order the detentions of people suspected of being security risks.
[…]
Postings appeared on Islamist Web sites on Tuesday denouncing Dr. Allawi as a puppet of the occupation forces. – EDWARD WONG; NYT; July 7, 2004 Wednesday; Foreign Desk; Late Edition – Final

Ironically, that last excerpt could just as easily have said: “Postings appeared on the NYTimes.com site denouncing Dr. Allawi as a puppet of the occupation forces.”

But today:

The picture painted by the administration clashed with that of the former interim prime minister, Ayad Allawi, once hailed by Mr. Bush as the kind of fair-minded leader Iraq needed. He declared in an interview with the BBC that the country was nearing a ‘’point of no return.’’
’’It is unfortunate that we are in civil war,’’ said Mr. Allawi, who served as prime minister after the American invasion and now leads a 25-seat secular alliance of representatives in Iraq’s 275-seat National Assembly. ‘’We are losing each day, as an average, 50 to 60 people through the country, if not more.’’
’’If this is not civil war,’’ he said, ‘’then God knows what civil war is.’’

Funny, now there’s no mention of accusations calling Allawi a “puppet.” It will be noteworthy to see if the NYT and its columnists react toward Allawi the same way they did toward Michael Brown — a target of scorn until his anti-Bush statements became helpful.