I take it from your hesitation that Australian involvement is not widely reported? Does that include our casualties? (I think from memory that we suffered the first casualties of all uniformed units - not surprising when you're at the pointy end of the work to be done). It seems to me that the US Govt should be encouraging the US press to make a major song and dance about all the countries involved in this war - it doesn't imply any weakness or loss of credibility for the US, but tells fence-sitters and even the oppressed people of the world our message, that the west will not tolerate terrorism and that we are united in righting these wrongs. It is easy for the people in some of these countries to be anti-US, but a lot harder to preach anti-restoftheworld feelings. (I mean, who can be anti-Norway...)
Cheers Russell C. Actually, I'd say that there's more coverage of Australia's presence than there is of any nation except Britain. While I completely agree that the press should cover our allies presence more, any attempt by the government to get them to do that would probably backfire. Given the instutionalized hostility of the American press to the government (and the military in particular, sadly) it would probably do more harm than good. To give you a feeling of how bad this is from the military side, btw, Col. Ralph Peters (USAR-Ret.) just wrote a column in the Wall Street Journal today in which he asked why the press seems so eager for American soldiers to be defeated and suffer casualties. I don't go that far at all, of course, but I will admit that I can see why he feels that way. Gautam
