Wall Street Journal OpinionJournal.com editor James Taranto claimed that Time magazine omitted the January 30 Iraqi elections from a “list of possible turning points” in recent Middle East politics as part of the magazine's “hilariously strained effort to deny credit to President Bush” for positive trends in the region. In fact, the article Taranto quoted, from the March 14 issue of Time, explicitly addressed political events in the region from the prior week alone. The article introduced its “list of turning possible points” as follows: “Across the Middle East last week, a tide of good news suggested that another corner might be near” [emphasis added].

From Taranto's March 9 “Best of the Web Today” column:

Another hilariously strained effort to deny credit to President Bush appears in this week's Time magazine:

Across the Middle East last week, a tide of good news suggested that another corner might be near. Amid the flush of springlike exuberance, though, it was hard to know which events history would immortalize. Was it President Hosni Mubarak's startling announcement that Egypt would hold its first-ever secret ballot, multiparty presidential elections? Was it the popular demonstrations in Beirut two days later that finally forced the resignation of the Syrian-backed Prime Minister and his Cabinet? Or did the start of something momentous come on Thursday, when Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Abdullah welcomed Syria's President Bashar Assad to Riyadh and not only told Assad to get Syria's 14,000 troops out of Lebanon but also announced to the world that he had said so?

What's missing from the list of possible turning points? The Iraqi election, of course.