Mail attachment not being attached

Question

I am trying to send an attachment but it is not working. I have two versions of the mail function ... one for Entourage and the other for Mail. The Entourage version works ... but the one for Mail does not have the attachment and I cannot see what I am doing wrong. Here is the code:
on sendEmail(theMessage)
set subjectvar to "Monthly backup status for " & dateText
if strMailApplication is "Entourage" then
tell application "Microsoft Entourage"
set composeMessage to (a reference to (make new outgoing message ¬
with properties {recipient:{address:strRecipientAddr, display name:strRecipientName, recipient type:to recipient}, content:theMessage, subject:subjectvar} ¬
make new attachment at composeMessage with properties {file:strLogFile}
send composeMessage
end tell
else
tell application "Mail"
set mailversion to version as string
set theAttachment to strLogFile
set composeMessage to (a reference to (make new outgoing message))
tell composeMessage
make new to recipient with properties {address:strRecipientAddr, name:strRecipientName}
set the subject to subjectvar
set the content to theMessage
set the sender to strSenderAddr
tell content
make new attachment with properties {file name:theAttachment}
end tell
end tell
send composeMessage
end tell
end if
end sendEmail

Answer 1

I figured it out ... the problem was that I needed to specify the attached file name as an alias ... once I did that I was able to send the attachment.
Here is the relevant change:
set theAttachment to file strLogFile as alias