Definition of "puppet" []

• A small figure of a person or animal, having a cloth body and hollow head, designed to be fitted over and manipulated by the hand. (noun)
• A figure having jointed parts animated from above by strings or wires; a marionette. (noun)
• A toy representing a human figure; a doll. (noun)
• One whose behavior is determined by the will of others: a political puppet. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "Things that you really wouldn't think about, like for example, you never use the word 'puppet'."
• "All over the world, all over the Islamic world and the Arab world, it's seen as a blackmail against Iraq and tentative by the Americans to topple a government, the Iraqi government, and to throw it and to put what they call a puppet regime like what has been put in Kabul, what they consider being put in Kabul, the Karzai government."
• "Afghan officials say they were deliberately bypassed in a concession to the Taliban, which has always refused to negotiate with what it labels the "puppet" Karzai government."