Given the oppressive but badly-organised security at the Atlanta Olympic games in 1996, you'd have thought the Australian government would have learned a lesson. This week that government committed 4,000 troops to safeguard the Sydney Olympics from terrorist attack.

Australian intelligence and security agencies have identified groups linked to international terrorist Osama bin Laden as posing the biggest potential threat to the Games.

Officials stress, however, that this threat is small at present but reports have said soldiers of the Special Air Service regiment will be on standby as will commandos and support units with the use of helicopters. They are trained to deal not just with conventional terrorist threats but chemical, biological and radiological attack.

This is all very well, but can they identify a bomb left in a canvas bag in the centre of a fairground, as was the case in Atlanta? The FBI are still looking for the culprit having paid a substantial sum to the prototype oddball "loner who lived with his mother", Richard Jewel, for incorrectly naming him as the bomber.