The latest issue of Harper’s magazine has a troubling investigation of the deaths of three Guantanamo detainees in 2006.  The U.S. government has portrayed the deaths as suicides but there are many reasons to believe that the detainees in question were tortured and murdered.

This might not seem like a pressing issue for our beleaguered president, with health care reform on the rocks and a humanitarian crisis in Haiti, to name a few things on his mind.  But it was a year ago that Obama promised to close Guantanamo (within a year) and unfortunately it is still in operation.  Graphic stories of detainee abuse are being reported in the British press.  While Obama ordered an end to the CIA’s coercive interrogation techniques, his administration can’t demonstrate a real commitment to human rights without investigating serious abuses in the recent past.

Unfortunately, the recent election of Scott Brown to the U.S. Senate (among other things, a proponent of waterboarding) might give Obama cold feet on these kinds of human rights issues.  But it shouldn’t.  America liked Obama best when he was saying idealistic stuff with conviction.  It’s been year since I stood on the National Mall and heard him say:

As for our common defense, we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals.  Our Founding Fathers, faced with perils that we can scarcely imagine, drafted a charter to assure the rule of law and the rights of man — a charter expanded by the blood of generations.  Those ideals still light the world, and we will not give them up for expedience sake.

So, Obama of 2010, meet Obama of 2009.  There’s still time to live up to your ideals.