Mr Maliki has worsened the situation by allowing and encouraging purges of Iraqi politicians in the name of de-Baathification and largely discontinuing the US-initiated policy of working with Sunni tribal leaders and their militias - the so-called Sons of Iraq - to isolate al-Qaeda.

We built a small atomic bomb in the garage.

Bowne, Metaphysics, 106 —“ In the system, the complete ground of an event never lies in any one thing, but only in a complex of things. If a single thing were the sufficient ground of an effect, the effect would coëxist with the thing, and all effects would be instantaneously given. Hence all events in the system must be viewed as the result of the interaction of two or more things.”

Political principles are rarely absolute, as political logic holds an imperfect result by compromise is better than a theoretically perfect abstention from the political process in the opposition.