Well, one important thing we don’t know is what really happened the first day at Tskhinvali. If the Georgians in fact levelled the place and killed a lot of civilians, it’s possible that the Russian bombing campaign is just some sort of revenge or payback. If the Russians/South Ossetians are wildly exagerating, then I think we can infer that the Russians are looking to do long-term harm to Georgia rather than merely to re-establish the Aug. 1 baseline.
The other main unknown, at least for me, is how the Georgian troops have fared in their clashes with the Russians to date. Here, I do see some signals that the answer is “quite well.”