Correction, New York Times, March 14:
“An article last Sunday about attempts to create democracy in Iraq misstated the precedent in the Mideast. Iraq would become the region’s second functioning democracy, after Israel, not its first.”
The oversight would be understandable if this weren’t a defining characteristic of the entire Mideast — Israel, the region’s pariah, perennial scapegoat, and (not coincidentally) only democracy. This was like a Mideast reporter forgetting that there’s oil in the region.
