Feds Rescue Hostage in Dramatic Pre-Dawn Raid

Early on Saturday morning, after lengthy negotiations had once again broken down, federal officers rescued a 6-year-old hostage from his Miami kidnappers. The kidnappers, inexplicably, were not taken into custody at that time.

The boy had been held in plain sight for months, often literally paraded about as a trophy by the distant relatives who held him, as well as local and national government officials and candidates, used as a pawn by both sides in the conflict between his country's dictator and the dissidents who fled when he took power. This conflict predates the child's birth by 35 years.

The child, whose mother perished trying to take him to America, had been persuaded by his captors that he would be punished if he was to return home. He had been showered with expensive gifts to convince him that to be in America was better for him than to be at home, with his family and friends.

He has now been reunited with his father, and is being kept away from the direct scrutiny of the media for the first time in over five months. Perhaps now he will have time to remember his love for his father, his stepmother, and his stepbrother.

Now that the child is out of the clutches of his captors, perhaps the media will treat this as it should have from the beginning -- an illegal immigration and child custody case -- and leave it to the proper authorities to decide his fate, ignoring the rhetoric of the extremely vocal Cuban exile minority. Perhaps our elected representatives will finally put aside their irrational policies of revenge against Fidel Castro, and help the people of Cuba -- yes, there are people who live there -- decide how they want to live.