Apparently Australian Prime Minister John Howard thinks he’s giving an appropriate number of troops to what views as essential to the war on terror even though the vast majority of the violence is sectarian in nature.
The US has 140,000 troops out of a population of 300,000,000 while Australia has 1,400 troops out of a population of 20,000,000. To offer up a proportionate force Australia would need to provide just under 10,000 troops. Currently about 850 Australian troops are even in Iraq and they have no deaths as of yet. One might suggest he’s scoring cheap political points without putting his own troops on the line every day.