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“Casualties”: falso cognato no ensaio da Time (ITA 2012)

The Double Mirror

How Pakistan’s intelligence service plays both sides

____________________ By DAVID IGNATIUS

1 (...) I found that I couldn’t capture ISI’s nuances in newspaper columns. So my eighth novel, Bloodmoney, is set largely in

Pakistan; it centers on a fictional ISI and a CIA whose operations inside Pakistan have spun out of control. I describe the director

general of my imaginary ISI this way: “To say that the Pakistani was playing a double game did not do him justice; his strategy was far

more complicated than that.”

5 This Janus-like quality is true of all intelligence services, I suppose, but I have never seen an organization quite like the ISI.

It is at once very secretive and very open, yet ISI officials get especially peeved at the charge of duplicity: “I can not go on defending

myself forever, even when I am not doing what I am blamed for,” wrote one of my ISI contacts, after I had written a column noting the

organization’s “double game” with the U.S. “I shall do what I think is good for PAKISTAN, my country. I am sure you will do the same

for US.”

10 What this official wanted me to understand was that Pakistan was suffering under its own onslaught of terrorism. An ISI

briefer almost shouted at me in 2010: “Mr. David Ignatius! Look at the casualties we have suffered fighting terrorism!” We’re in

alongside the U.S., ISI officials insist. Yet they are caught in the backwash of an anti-American rhetoric they help create. The ISI’s

press cell feeds Pakistani newspapers constantly; presumably, it thinks its U.S.-bashing leaks will hide the reality of the ISI’s

cooperation. But the puppeteer has gotten caught in the strings. Anti-Americanism has taken a virulent form that threatens the ISI too.

ISI = Inter-Services Intelligence

Time, May 23, 2011 Essay Adaptado.

Fonte: Time, 23/5/2011.

A palavra casualties (linha 11)

  1. A) é sinônimo de eventualities.
  2. B) pode ser entendida como desgastes.
  3. C) expressa uma relação de causa e consequência.
  4. D) é o mesmo que ataques.
  5. E) pode ser substituida por losses.
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Resposta correta: E

A frase é um desabafo em contexto de guerra: “Mr. David Ignatius! Look at the casualties we have suffered fighting terrorism!”. O verbo suffer e o complemento fighting terrorism situam a palavra no campo das baixas humanas — mortos e feridos —, e é por isso que losses (perdas) é a substituição adequada, como propõe E. O distrator A é a armadilha clássica do falso cognato: casualties não tem relação com “casualidades” nem com eventualities, apesar da semelhança gráfica com casual. D (ataques) também erra o alvo, porque confunde a ação sofrida com o resultado dela: o ataque é o terrorismo, as casualties são as vítimas que ele produziu; e C tenta ler a palavra como se derivasse de cause, o que não ocorre.

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