This article is very well written, but a pathetic propaganda piece by an obviously anti US author who does not want the USA to build an aircraft storage facility in Australia. Her position follows the usual left wing party line, that no matter what the yanks do, they must be up to something insidious.

She concludes that the US facility must be bad for Australia after a lot of creative thinking. She grossly overestimates the Chinese space warfare assets, including their ability to shoot down (a non manoeuvring) satellite, and claims that the US facilities in Australia are desperately needed by the US to counter this laughable Chinese technological lead. If she ever picked up a copy of Aviation Week she might avail himself that the US is decades ahead of the Chinese in that department.

She equates the fact that the Chinese now own a 20 year old ex Soviet built aircraft carrier, with the fact that the USA builds the best carriers in the world, has more than a dozen of them, has a dozen old ones in reserve, and a couple of dozen "assault ships" which make fine aircraft carriers for VSTOL aircraft.

Upon such flawed thinking she darkly intimates a long list of far fetched negative effects that this horrible base could have. Among them the rather potty idea that the USA could store ICBM's in it and it might secretly store nuclear warheads at a nuclear waste dump just up the road.

She never even hints that the Australia's defence policy for the last sixty years has been to defend Australia by fighting to the last American, or that Australia might just have to do something for the yanks in return.

I don't understand why Kate Smith hates the Americans so much. Like western Europe, the yanks are in decline anyway, and just like Europe, they are broke. The next superpowers will be a population poor, geriatric, rich, nationalist socialist China, and a population expanding, poverty stricken Muslim world.

If you hate the yanks, Kate, you sure as hell won't like what is coming next.

Lego and I must have been reading a different article because apart from the first six words of his comment I do not recognise a single aspect that he purports to see.

This is an important article. It raises issues that are scarcely debated within the Australian body politic. The present government has taken several steps to raise the level of the US military presence in Australia, virtually without public debate and certainly with no serious opposition from the Coalition.

But there are very important issues at stake, including but not limited to a consideration of whether or not transforming the US military presence in Australia is in fact in Australia's best interests.

Kate, there will always be nincompoops like Lego who automatically translate any attempt at discussion of these issues into a perceived anti-American diatribe. Do not be deterred. I suspect the vast majority of Australians are unaware of the real role of Pine Gap, or how that is only one example of a rapidly expanding US military presence on our soil, particularly in North Queensland and Western Australia.

These matters need to be widely discussed. The main political parties need to come clean with the electorate about what they are negotiating in secret so that we might have a real and informed choice come 14 September. A lack of real discussion, to which your article is an honourable exception, only drives the xenophobic fantasies of some of the commenters on this site.

Could I respectfully suggest, Mr James O'Neill, that if you can't see the muddled thinking and outright anti Americanism in Kate Smith's article, you are not looking very hard?

If the presence of US bases on Australian soil is a matter of profound indifference to both sides of the Australian parliament, then that is because both sides see the advantage of the US/Australia alliance. And both sides of parliament recognise that most Australians are in very much in favour of that.

Could I also suggest that anti Americanism is very much a minority opinion among Australians? And that its propagation is the defining characteristic of an educated caste well known for their contempt for their fellow Australians, and their self righteous belief that they are morally and intellectually superior to everybody else?

Contemporary anti Americanism is now the preserve of the Greens, who are very much on the nose with the electorate for always supporting anything that goes against the interests of their own people. The Green constituency primarily consists of homosexuals, Muslims, immature young people who want to give the adult world the finger, and a coven of inner city elites who really know how to talk down to their inferiors.

And I see that you are not immune to that yourself with you "nincompoop" slur.

The USA is the leader of the western world, James, and it's military protector. If it wasn't for the USA, all of Europe would now be singing "Deutchland Uber Alles" as their national anthem, all of Asia would be sing "The East is Red", and the Grenadier Guards would now be goose stepping around Buckingham Palace.

If you knew your own countries history, you would know that when Darwin was first bombed by the Japs, almost the entire Australian garrison took to their heels and headed for Adelaide. The only ones who stood their ground were some Australian AA units, the Australian Navy, and the US Navy and Air Force. Say thank you, USA. If the USA wants to garrison our North with their fine young men, then I say thank you, again

Leg Over has not a clue. The groin lust of power, seems to expunge all reason or logic.

We are just the puppet of the Banking Military Industrial Complex. Russian and China are standing up to our master's imperialism with enormous effect.

Vladmir Putin was the only leader at the recent G8 meeting to oppose the attacks on both Syria and Iran.

Syria has not only the S300 missiles ready, but also the Russian S400 missiles that are far more advanced than the Patriot US Missiles. Obama is balking at an attack, however the lunatic neo-cons want war to escape our awareness. We,with notions of freedom, are the real enemies.

The Russians could not have a missile more advanced than the yanks, Arjay. The Ivans and the chinks have to wait until the yanks invent a new technology before they can steal it.

Lego, you are obviously caught in a time warp circa the 1940s. You are badly in need of an updating of geo-political realities. Read Scott's American War Machine, Edmonds' Classified Woman, Scahill's Dirty Wars and Turse's Kill Anything That Moves, the latter three all published in the past 12 months, for some insights into how the world is really run.