Ghosts of 9/11 haunt US policy_美文_趣味英语-查字典英语网

Ghosts of 9/11 haunt US policy

In his first year in office, Obama ordered a surge of 30,000 troops in Afghanistan. He has authorized an increasing number of drone attacks. He sanctioned 283 strikes in Pakistan, eight times more than the Bush administration did in eight years.

While Obama, former CIA director Michael Hayden and others defend drones as an accurate and effective tool to eliminate key enemies, human rights groups and many Obama followers have been critical of the targeted killings, which caused collateral civilian deaths. Some have referred to the drone strike that killed US-born cleric Anwar al-Awlaki in Yemen as the assassination of an American citizen.

Many have been angry with Obama for breaking his promise, made four years ago, to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay, where suspected terrorists are held indefinitely without trials.

On Monday, the US military announced that one prisoner had died in the high-security prison, bringing the number of prisoner deaths at the facility to nine since it opened in 2002. A total of 167 prisoners are still kept there.

Questions

1 What year did 9/11 happen?

2 How many strikes has Obama sanctioned in Pakistan?

3 How many prisoners are kept at Guantanamo Bay prison?

Answers

1. 2001.

2. 283 strikes.

3. 167 prisoners.

About the broadcaster:

Rosie Tuck is a copy editor at the China Daily website. She was born in New Zealand and graduated from Auckland University of Technology with a Bachelor of Communications studies majoring in journalism and television. In New Zealand she was working as a junior reporter for the New Zealand state broadcaster TVNZ. She is in Beijing on a 2017 Pacific Media Centre international internship with the AUT/China Daily Exchange Programme, in partnership with the Asia New Zealand Foundation. She is working as a journalist in the English news department at the China Daily website.