What makes a building attractive to terrorists?

It was because they were symbols of the United States' military and economic power that the al-Qaida attacked the Pentagon and World Trade Center 12 years ago. And it was for this reason that terrorists crashed a jeep into a crowd of people on Oct 28 near the Tian'anmen Rostrum, killing five, including the three attackers, and injuring another 40. By striking at the rostrum they hoped to attract global attention by hitting at the heart of the Chinese.

In one sense they succeeded the news, like all terrorist attacks, quickly spread around the whole world, although it was distorted by some Western media.

CNN was one of the most active distorters. In its report on the July 5, 2009 riots in Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region, CNN used fake photos of China's military drills to prove a non-existent "military crackdown" on Uygur people. This time CNN invited an "expert" to support its distortion of the truth.

On Oct 31, CNN published on its homepage an article by Sean R. Roberts, an associate professor from Washington University. In the article, Roberts tried to deny the attack was an act of terrorism with the specious argument that the perpetrators used a vehicle, gasoline and knives, instead of guns; and did not, according to him, belong to any international militant groups.