I won't post sources on this, so any folks are welcome to consider this my fanciful speculation.

But sources close to Obama report to me that after the "surge of concern" on the net about Evan Bayh, he has not been selected as Obama's VP running mate.

I have been informed that the decision has been made, and I don't know who that person is.

I also have been told that Tom Daschle is not the running mate. I also happen to know that it is not Wesley Clark.

I just received word that it is not Senator Jack Reed either, though Obama thought very highly of him.

In my estimation, that leaves Joseph Biden, Chuck Hagel, and Sibelius....

Anya Loukianova, blogging at Total Wonkerr observes that the Georgian Interior Ministry claims Russia launched conventionally-armed SS-26 “Iskander” missiles into Georgia. She also posted a link to the Russian denial.

Shota Utiashvili, Head of the Analytical Department at the Georgian Interior Ministry, shows photographs purporting to document debris from three Iskander (SS-26) missiles. (The original link to the press briefing was hard to find, so I uploaded it to YouTube.)

The Interior Ministry also released 23 images to back up the assertion — although I have to say that the debris doesn’t look to me like it came particularly from an SS-26 (though it is clearly Russian ordnance of some sort). But I wouldn’t know an SS-26 if, well, it’s flaming debris fell on me. So, that’s where you come in, my friends...

People often ask me why, as a philosophy major, I ended up in this particular field. I was an epistemologist — someone who studied knowledge and justified belief. The art of intelligence is, in that way, a massive exercise in practical epistemology.

Today, Erroll Morris — a wonderful film-maker who shares my epistemological predilections — continues his wonderful discussion begun last month of the doctored Shahab-3 images, including a brief commentary on Colin Powell’s execrable UN presentation:

ERROL MORRIS: No. Not that I’m aware of. But doctored photographs are the least of our worries. If you want to trick someone with a photograph, there are lots of easy ways to do it. You don’t need Photoshop. You don’t need sophisticated digital photo-manipulation. You don’t need a computer. All you need to do is change the caption.

[The photographs presented by Colin Powell at the United Nations in 2003 provide several examples. Photographs that were used to justify a war. And yet, the actual photographs are low-res, muddy aerial surveillance photographs of buildings and vehicles on the ground in Iraq. I’m not an aerial intelligence expert. I could be looking at anything. It is the labels, the captions, and the surrounding text that turn the images from one thing into another.6

Photographs presented by Colin Powell at the United Nations in 2003.Photographs presented by Colin Powell at the United Nations in 2003. (U.S. Department of State)

...

In the next day or two, the Obama campaign will unveil a new web site as part of its BarackObama.com franchise to lure in dissident members or former members of the GOP.

Although I contacted the campaign's communications office to get the exact web address of the new site, TWN has not yet received a response. We have been told by one source that the site will be (and will modify later if incorrect):

www.BarackObama.com/GOP

This site, at the moment, still seems unloaded or is not yet live.

The new campaign to sign up Republicans for Obama hopes to get 250,000 people to register their names on the site.

Philanthropist and former NY co-chair for the George W. Bush campaign in 2000 Rita Hauser and former Senator Lincoln Chafee are both part of the leadership committee of the group....

In the clip below, Robert Farley of the University of Kentucky and Jacob Heilbrunn of The National Interest discuss Russia’s complicated history with Georgia. If the U.S. can invade Iraq, why shouldn’t Russia invade Georgia? Other issues discussed include the Neocons role in the Georgia mess and how the U.S. post-Cold War Russia policy led to disaster.

To see the full diavlog, please visit Blogginheads.tv

In the Times of London, Anatol Lieven reminds that South Ossetia and Abkhazia had been in the center of turmoil between Georgia and Russia and their own assertions of independence in 1918 and then again in 1991, when the Soviet Union disintegrated.

On his FT blog, Gideon Rachman thinks Saakashvili overplayed his hand with the Russians and was too confident in American support. Rachman writes:

It seems to me that the Georgians under-estimated the ferocity of the Russian reaction and over-estimated the support they would get from the west. When I interviewed President Saakashvili earlier this year, he was keen to boast of his personal friendships with the likes of President Bush, John McCain and President Sarkozy.

My hotel in Tbilisi was full of American military personnel. But Nato's refusal to offer Georgia a "Membership action plan" late last year was a warning that there was a clear limit to how far Georgia's western friends will go in its defence.

Third, Ronald Asmus and Richard Holbrooke call for a new transatlantic strategic plan to deal with Russia's heightened aggressiveness. Asmus and Holbrooke at first say that it's hard to see exactly who or what started the conflict in South Ossetia but nonetheless suggest that we must stand by Georgia and hold against Russia. Regrettably, there is little analysis in their piece of what actually created the ecosystem of fragility and imbalance between Georgia, two autonomous provices, and Russia. I regret to say that Holbrooke and Asmus don't look back to Kosovo independence and other measures America took to gut and neutralize Russia's interests. If they had included a bit of American self-reflection, I'd agree with them that a new strategic course is needed -- but not one that focuses almost exclusively on punishing Russia.

Finally, my own views on the Russia-Georgia War are here and have been referenced widely around the blogosphere.

I hope to have comments from Nixon Center President Dimitri Simes later in the day.

Dear Stumped: It seems that, from time-to-time, politicians make assertions that are demonstrably incorrect, yet their statements are treated as legitimate arguments in debate. Why the reticence in the press to employ a descriptor such as "falsehood" or "lie" when one is clearly offered up? I guess I am getting old, but in my youth, assertion did not sit at the same table as logic and deduction in debate.  --Grey at the Temples

Dear Grey: This is a problem journalists grapple with all the time, not only at election time. America's "objective" media engages in adversarial reporting of the "he said, she said" variety, and reporters are often reluctant to openly take sides in the conflicts they chronicle. Even when they can't resist, they still have to recruit a source to voice their concerns or perspective....

New America Schwartz Senior Fellows Robert Wright and James Pinkerton discuss Prime Minister Maliki's endorsement of Barack Obama's plan to withdraw from Iraq, and the political motivations behind Maliki's statements.

An excerpt is viewable below. To see the full diavlog, visit Bloggingheads.tv

This trip to Israel and today to Palestine has been extremely eye-opening. Condoleezza Rice will be here on Monday -- and there is antipathy to her trip at the highest levels of government.

I've been told that she comes with no plan, no ideas, no pressure to move in any direction whatsoever. According to a source very close to Prime Minister Ehud Ohlmert, she doesn't even ask questions about the basic positions on each side so as to understand the "gaps" and then to offer ideas -- or even pressure on the Israelis and Palestinians -- to close the gaps. Those engaged credibly in the peace process here want American engagement -- and want the U.S. to play a role in defining "best options" among many competing visions of how this is going to work out.

I'll have more to say later regarding some surprising perspectives I've encountered about Hamas....

In this Blogging Heads excerpt, Michael Goldfarb, editor of the Weekly Standard's The Blog, and Blake Hounshell, web editor at Foreign Policy, try to figure out why the Bush Administration still lashes its Paksitan policy to Pervez Musharraf in the wake of his defeat, which signals the inauguration of a democratic government. Later, they also discuss how democracy in Pakistan will enhance counterinsurgency effort in the region. This excerpt touches on a number of ideas and concerns raised by New America's foreign policy experts.

The excerpt is viewable below. For the full "diavlog," please visit BloggingHeads.tv.