MICKEY KAUS is asking a lot of questions about strategy that are also being asked by others. I don’t know the answer to these questions, and I’ve refrained from this kind of speculation because I think it’s largely meaningless in the absence, of, you know, actual facts. But his post offers a nice central repository of the “what’s Rumsfeld’s hurry?” school of thought.

Kaus also asks:

But I’m still skeptical about the Iraqi claims that two U.S. missiles have now struck crowded marketplaces and killed dozens. Why do these errant missiles always fall in crowded marketplaces and kill dozens? Why don’t they ever fall in back alleys and kill one or two people?

The answer appears to be that they’re errant Iraqi SAMS rather than errant U.S. missiles. A reader adds:

For the last few days, I’ve been wondering how come Bob Fisk hasn’t been jumping up and down waving bits of metal with “Raytheon” printed on it. Surely the Iraqis have enough of the stuff lying about the place by now…

Heard Iraqi caller to BBC phone-in yesterday (not some sort of coalition media shill, his English was lousy and he didn’t “project” as the saying goes); he said that from calls to Baghdad, the locals all believe that the Saddam regime is behind these attacks.

Interesting.

UPDATE: Well, ask and you shall receive. Fisk is jumping up and down, and may even be right, sort of — though if it’s American it’s a HARM missile that was probably fired at an Iraqi mobile radar placed in the market area. Tim Blair has more.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Tim Blair has even more here.