In the early hours of Saturday morning the bubble of speculation burst when it finally became official: Barack Obama had picked Senator Joe Biden as his running mate. "The six-term Senator from Delaware is strongest in areas where the freshman from Illinois is weakest," wrote Massimo Calabresi in Time magazine. "Biden's tenure in the Senate, his foreign policy expertise, his religion, and his suburban middle-class background, all fill gaps in Obama's own presidential profile. "Most of all, where Obama is reserved and cautious in a political knife-fight, Biden comes out swinging. Tapping Biden is a signal that the Obama campaign is ready for a battle - and to take the risks that come with it." In Newsweek, Howard Fineman said: "The minute-by-minute story of how Obama handled the selection is interesting, and revealing of the way the Democratic nominee works. He insisted on the utmost secrecy; he paid the losers the courtesy of essentially telling them 'no' to their faces - not an easy thing to do. And he swallowed his considerable pride and all but confessed his lack of knowledge of foreign affairs by selecting as his running mate the Senate's senior Democratic leader on that topic." But as Slate's John Dickerson noted: "The problem with picking a vice president who balances your own lack of experience is that it, well, highlights your own lack of experience. Obama famously told CBS's Lara Logan that he never has any doubt about his ability on the world stage. He will of course say this - but regular folk might not see it that way, and the McCain team has quips at its disposal that could play into their concerns. You can almost see the ads already: The Democrats should have reversed the ticket to put the experienced guy at the top. When there's an international crisis at 3 am, the phone doesn't ring at the vice president's house." The Los Angeles Times said: "Through a mix of marketing and campaign discipline, Barack Obama turned the selection of his running mate into a genuine drama. "For weeks, the Obama campaign kept silent about virtually every aspect of the process, with the candidate coyly telling reporters the other day that he had made up his mind - and 'wouldn't you like to know' exactly when he would tell the world? "Top campaign strategists and surrogates for Obama professed to know nothing about his intentions, the better to keep the mystery alive. "Obama's handling of the announcement is the latest example of his penchant for crafting big, attention-grabbing events out of what are normally predictable campaign steps." Even so, as The New York Times reported, there are clear signs that American voters are already suffering from "Obama fatigue." "An early August Pew survey found 48 per cent of respondents saying they had heard 'too much' about Barack Obama. Just 26 per cent in the poll said they had heard too much about John McCain, while 38 per cent reported that they had heard too little about the likely Republican nominee. "Mr Obama's extensive media exposure did not result in giving voters a fuller or better sense of who he is politically. A mid-July Pew survey found 59 per cent of voters saying they knew little or nothing about his foreign policy positions, and 49 per cent said the same about his economic positions. Knowledge of the Democratic candidate's foreign policy positions was unchanged from a March poll. "Voters were expressing Obama fatigue in response to a torrent of media coverage that did not add much to their understanding of the candidate. These frustrations may have been reinforced by the McCain campaign's advertisement that portrayed Mr Obama as the celebrity candidate."
Karzai condemns airstrike killing Afghan civilians
"President Hamid Karzai strongly condemned on Saturday a coalition airstrike that he said killed up to 95 Afghans - including 50 children - in a village in western Afghanistan on Friday, and said his government would be announcing measures to prevent the loss of civilian life in the future," The New York Times reported. "Government officials who traveled to the village of Azizabad in Herat Province on Saturday said the death toll had risen to 95 from 76, making it one of the deadliest airstrikes on civilians in nearly seven years of war." Meanwhile, The Times reported: "The lorry drivers who bring the Pepsi and petrol for Nato troops in Kabul have their own way of calculating the Taliban's progress towards the Afghan capital: they simply count the lorries destroyed on the main roads. "By that measure, and many others, this looks increasingly like a city under siege as the Taliban start to disrupt supply routes, mimicking tactics used against the British in 1841 and the Soviets two decades ago." Time magazine said: "The unprecedented audacity of Tuesday's attack on one of the largest US bases in Afghanistan reflects the growing confidence of the Taliban: Six men wearing suicide bomb-vests attempted to rush the entrance gate of Camp Salerno in Khost Province. But unlike most suicide bombers, these men were not simply looking to blow themselves up in order to kill those within range of their blasts; instead, they were the human battering ram of a kamikaze infantry attack, sent to blow a breach in the security barrier for the fighters following in their wake to penetrate the base and spread maximum devastation inside a well-protected concentration of American power. "That mission failed after three suicide bombers were shot dead and the other three detonated prematurely. But the Camp Salerno assault was just one of a slew of attacks across Afghanistan and Pakistan this week that underscore the perilous decline in security on both sides of the border." Reporting from Islamabad for The Australian on Pakistan's campaign against militants, Bruce Loudon said: "He has one of the world's most dangerous jobs - turning back the seemingly unstoppable tide of al Qa'eda and Taliban-linked jihadi militancy sweeping across nuclear-armed Pakistan. "And Rehman Malik, as we talk in his Islamabad office, makes it clear that the days of pussyfooting in Pakistan's fight against the militants are over. 'Look, we've got two choices,' says Malik, formerly one of Benazir Bhutto's closest aides and now Pakistan's security supremo who heads the Interior Ministry. " 'Either we can hand this country over to the Taliban, or we can fight. I am going to fight.'" Reporting on the political front after the resignation of Pervez Musharraf, the Los Angeles Times said: "The senior party in Pakistan's ruling coalition inaugurated a push Friday to elect its leader, Asif Ali Zardari, as the country's next president. "A spokeswoman for the Pakistan People's Party, Sherry Rehman, said the party's decision to back Zardari was unanimous."
Ukraine hopes for protection in Nato
"Viktor Yushchenko, the Ukrainian President, was in a fierce and defiant mood yesterday as he urged Nato to respond to the Russian invasion of Georgia by moving quickly to expand the frontiers of the alliance eastwards. "In an exclusive interview with The Times Mr Yushchenko asserted that the fundamentals of international politics had changed. Ukraine had to do everything in its power to ensure it was not going to be next on the Kremlin hitlist. " 'It is the first time in Europe since the Cold War that a foreign army has entered the territory of a sovereign state without any internationally accepted legal basis,' he said." McClatchy Newspapers reported: "Sen Lindsey Graham said Friday that his visit to Georgia, Ukraine and Poland, at Sen John McCain's behest, persuaded him that the United States and its allies must take tough steps to prevent further Russian military aggression against its smaller neighbours. "Graham, a South Carolina Republican, called on Nato to 'stop war-gaming on tables in Brussels' and to begin military exercises in Europe to show its commitment to protecting member nations. " 'I found a Russia on the move, a Russia that is trying to intimidate its neighbours who are democratic in nature,' Graham said. 'This (Georgia) conflict is not about a border dispute. It's about the desire by Russia to send a signal to its democratic neighbours that Russia is a dominant power.'" William Courtney and Kenneth Yalowitz, former US ambassadors to Kazakhstan and Georgia respectively, wrote in The Washington Post: "The United States and Europe should respond in a firm but focused way. Initially this means pressuring Russia to meet its withdrawal commitments, which it still is not clearly doing. Over the longer term, it means strengthening Georgia and its neighbours while keeping open the doors of communication with Moscow. "Stalling Russian membership in the World Trade Organisation would delay arrangements and incentives for Russia to deal fairly with other nations. Helping Georgia rebuild and modernise its infrastructure, in contrast, will enhance prosperity and decrease Tbilisi's vulnerability to economic pressure. The West should offer targeted reconstruction support - along the lines of Sen Joe Biden's proposal for a billion dollars in assistance - as well as humanitarian aid, and it should encourage investment. "Threatening to withdraw support for Russia's hosting of the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi would divide the West and probably fail. If by next summer, however, Russia has not fully withdrawn from Georgia or is otherwise mistreating its neighbours, it should be removed from the Group of Eight industrial democracies." Meanwhile, reporting from Gori, The Washington Post said: "Russia pulled troops and armored vehicles out of vast swaths of seized territory and ended its 10-day occupation of this Georgian city Friday, but Georgian and foreign officials disputed Russia's claim that it had complied with the terms of a recent cease-fire agreement. "Columns of Russian trucks, tanks and artillery pieces rumbled north throughout the day toward the breakaway territories whose disputed status sparked the current crisis. Just before leaving Gori at 8 pm, Russian forces detonated giant explosions on various Georgian armories and military installations that spewed flames and black smoke into the sky."