The thing about news stories is that they're artificially reduced to stand-alone sort of things. In political news, the whole story is wider in scope than the news can cover. Politics and government are ongoing stories, with each news item merely a facet of the wider narrative. To look at a single newspaper piece or network news report and think the headline tells you everything is like thinking "The King is Assassinated" is all there is to know about MacBeth. You've got your witches, you've got the grasping power-lust of Lady MacBeth, you've got the guilt over the murder of Banquo -- there's a lot more to it than just one dead king. The story goes on in both directions, before and after Duncan's death.Sometimes, the background to the stories we see reported by the media goes back a bit. And sometimes. as in MacBeth, events foretold come to pass. In two stories, we see the larger story. Like they say, past is prologue. A news story that's been making some waves lately has been the "retirement" of Adm. Fallon:
Bloomberg News:
Admiral William Fallon's resignation as U.S. commander in the Middle East provoked criticism that President George W. Bush won't tolerate dissent and fed speculation his Iran policy could become more confrontational.
"Congress needs to determine immediately whether Admiral Fallon's resignation is another example of truth tellers being forced to the sidelines in the Bush administration," said Senator John Kerry, the Massachusetts Democrat who lost to Bush in the 2004 election. "His departure must not clear the way for a rush to war with Iran."
After a series of interviews critical of the administration's "war at any minute" attitude toward Iran, Fallon's out. An article in Esquire was apparently the final straw. "I want to go through something positive rather than a negative like Iran, which is a real problem," Fallon says...
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