The Dallas Morning News editorial board just met

with Tom Schieffer, the US Ambassador to Australia. We asked him about what

the war on terror looks like from Australia, and specifically about what

kinds of hits Australian PM John Howard has taken for his backing of

President Bush. Amb. Schieffer told a long, and moving story about how he

was with the Aussie PM in Washington on 9/11. Howard was supposed to address

a joint session of Congress on that day, but obviously it had to be

cancelled. The ambassador described in detail what the day was like for him

and the PM in Washington that day, and concluded by saying that being in the

US capital on 9/11 gave the PM a deep understanding for what America and its

leadership had suffered — and that that made Howard much more likely to

stand by Bush in later days. Turns out that VP Cheney had to loan Air Force

Two to the Australian leader so he could get back home and run his country;

the PM had come on a commercial flight, and of course there were no

commercial flights in the air for a while after 9/11.