Everybody should read this article in today’s Times about the new crackdown in Baghdad. The plan is basically to reverse ethnic-cleanse the city, evicting the new tenants of neighborhoods that have been already cleansed and then resettling the evictees.

Under the general’s plan, people who have illegally occupied homes will have 15 days to leave. While they are there, he said, they must protect the home, not steal from it or damage it.

“Anyone who does not follow this law will be treated according to the antiterrorism laws,” he said, adding that the government would set up committees to determine ownership.

We have a fair degree of experience at this point in how to attempt or in many cases not even to attempt such cleansing reversals in the Balkans. One almost never attempts such a plan until you’re definitely in a post-war period. Doing it in the midst of an escalating cycle of sectarian violence seems like a recipe for disaster. The Times quotes Samantha Power describing the plan “as either a public relations ploy that would never be enforced, or worse, a prelude to more sectarian cleansing and catastrophe.”

We’re just listening to the Bush press briefing today. And he’s telling reporters that he knows absolutely that the Iranian Republican Guards are responsible for sending in the weapons that are now being used against US troops. There are some delicate word games involved. But that’s what he’s saying.

He’s saying he knows as a certainty something that his own Chairman of the Joint Chiefs is not willing to say he believes.

President Bush refuses to answer any questions whatsoever about the Libby trial. No answers on pardons, the trial, complicity of administration officials. Nothing.

Bush: To be patriotic you don’t have to agree with my policy, but you do have to support it.

We’re going to have an extensive report momentarily, with video, on the accusations the president made this morning regarding Iranian complicity in the transfer of arms used to kill Americans.

Let me briefly explain how it looks to us.

The president is intentionally dodging the key issue of whether the arms in question are going to people killing Americans because of decisions by the Iranian government or its agents or whether they are getting there through black market transfers. If you listen to what the president says the statement is intentionally crafted to ignore this issue while seeming to address it. This wording is not off-hand.

What the president wants people to think is that the only remaining question is whether the orders are coming from the highest eschelons of the Iranian government or whether an arm of the Iranian government is freelancing. CNN at least seems to have been taken in by the dodge, reporting that the president is saying the same thing as Gen. Pace. That’s not our understanding. Again, the president’s statement today was intentionally misleading. We’ll have more to unpack it shortly.

Late Update: Here’s our update.

Interested in seeing the internal talking points that went out to House Dems for use in the debate about escalation? We have them for you right here.

Update: Two more House GOPers break ranks, come out in favor of anti-escalation resolution.

Late update: Another House Republican breaks ranks, joins Dems against “surge.”

Later update: And another four Republicans join Dems against escalation.

Here’s our update on President Bush’s misleading statements this morning on Iranian weapons transfers.

Barbara Starr gets bamboozled by President Bush and the DOD press operation.

It’s official: Al Franken throws his hat in the ring.

Full frontal bamboozlement: in remarks at Brookings, Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns just went beyond what President Bush said in remarks on Iranian arms transfers into Iraq.