It's probably too early to award the 2007 prize for Dumbest Commentary, but this column by a former chief of staff of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee surely will be among the finalists.

In his call for a change in US policy toward Cuba, Pat M. Holt acknowledges that Fidel Castro "has an efficient and ubiquitous secret police and has not hesitated to use it to quash opposition."  Then Holt goes on to write -- in what may be the single most blindingly stupid sentence ever written, which is saying something -- that "paradoxically, he has had remarkable public support."

Really, Pat?  How do we know this?  From all the free and fair elections Castro has held?

It gets worse.  Holt goes on to write that

"Apart from the missile crisis...Cuba has never been a threat to the United States."