In the future, when historians are picking up the pieces, they will inevitably ask, as they still do of the Germans, "How could it happen? How could civilized people become savage and barbarous so quickly? And why didn't anyone do anything to stop it?"

Shows on the History Channel of the future will have long slow zoom-out shots of the ruins of Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib, the sun setting in the background, a groundskeeper trudging across the horizon, and a gravelly elderly male voice intoning ruefully about the human condition and the quandaries of the problem of evil as single acoustic guitar notes pick out plaintively and the screen fades to black. The Chinese, Indian, and Brazilian viewers will simultaneously click their remotes, power down their televisions, and stiffly raise themselves from their couches. As they brush their teeth, readying themselves for bed and another work day, they will shake their heads wondering how the world could have been so mad and thinking that at least they live in a place and time where that sort of thing couldn't happen. By morning it will seem like a bad dream.

So please help the historians. Watch this movie. Sign this petition. Get it in the historical record.

Gonzales will be confirmed. Torture will be essentially legalized in the US. America will attack Iran before 2008 either directly or by proxy. But at least after the dust settles, after the American Empire passes through bellicose senility into impotent dementia and finally irrelevance, someone will know that we weren't all totally insane.