Today's Must Read: The New Yorker on marriage equality & the Prop 8 case

Margaret Talbot has produced a beautifully researched and written story.

Must Read: What really happened at Abu Ghraib & the stink could go up very high

By Diane Silver

Today's must read is a bombshell article about the Abu Graib scandal in The New Yorker. In an in-depth interview with Army Major General Antonio M. Taguba, the man who investigated Abu Graib, journalist Seymour Hersh reveals Taguba's thoughts about what really happened.

The bottom line is that Taguba was punished by the Army for his honest report and is now spilling all the beans. One of the biggest "beans" is how his investigation was limited, so that he could only look at the MPs and not at anyone above them.

Taguba says about what the U.S. did at Abu Graib:

(T)he fact is that we violated the laws of land warfare in Abu Ghraib. We violated the tenets of the Geneva Convention. We violated our own principles and we violated the core of our military values. The stress of combat is not an excuse, and I believe, even today, that those civilian and military leaders responsible should be held accountable."

The article and commentary on it are already all over the blogosphere. Here are some good, recent posts:

Josh Marshall

Andrew Sullivan "The Unraveling"

Think Progress summarizes the story and details the cover-up: "I thought I was in the Mafia."