Zealous pursuit of wrong guys

I may be wrong, but I've never believed any visible exile warrior would actually carry through a murder plot against Castro. Somewhere along the way, someone would blab something to somebody, tell a cousin, girlfriend or supposed confidant.

I'm not saying such plots should go unpunished. They should, if only for their potentially disastrous impact on the way Castro is perceived by generations to come.

We already have Castro the dictator, the impostor revolutionary, the closet capitalist, the vengeful warden, the internationally tolerated murderer.

We don't need Castro the martyr. Castro the dictator is an aging mortal. Castro the martyr could be ominously eternal.

It's ludicrous to believe that a murdered Castro would go down in history as anything less than a victim. Alive, he's often received like a pop star. Dead, he'd be lionized -- or, at the very least, Chihuahua-sized in commercials.

Plots must be stopped

This is why such plots, realistic or not, need to be stopped in their tracks.

But I hardly think this is why the U.S. government is going full force after the seven exiles indicted last week by a federal grand jury in Puerto Rico for allegedly plotting to kill Castro.

U.S. prosecutors filed attempted murder and conspiracy charges against the seven exiles after four were arrested aboard a yacht carrying weapons, including sniper rifles. The three other exiles indicted include Jose Antonio Llama, a director of the Cuban American National Foundation.

This is serious business -- convictions could bring sentences of life in prison. The U.S. government is investing its money and might on making examples of these exiles, and sending a warning to those who would hatch such plots on American soil. I understand that part -- it's the law.

But here's the part I don't get: While this government is putting in an enormous amount of energy to prosecute folks who did or did not intend to kill Castro, other political crimes -- actual murders -- go unpunished. I would understand the zeal if there were an even spirit of justice behind it.

In the case of the Castro plot, there was no murder. There is no body. Castro is happily trotting the planet in his olive drabs, his backside partly protected by your tax dollars.

Political murders

Meanwhile, the political murders of three U.S. citizens and one U.S. resident have never been prosecuted, despite witnesses and an abundance of evidence.

In February 1996, Cuban fighter MiGs shot down two U.S. civilian aircraft over international waters, killing the four men aboard. The unarmed Cessnas were flying humanitarian search-and-rescue missions for Brothers to the Rescue when the premeditated attack occurred.

Last year, a federal judge in Miami ordered the Cuban government to pay $188 million to relatives of the murdered Americans. But that was a long way from justice -- no criminal charges have been filed.

It's not that the murderers are unknown. We know who they are -- they're still running an island 90 miles from Key West.

The shooting down of the Cessnas was not about Cuban national security. It was murder. There were dead Americans. There was a wreckage. But still there has been no justice.

It makes you wonder if prosecutors were saving up all their drive to use against a few deluded warriors and their supposed plots.