Last week, the Environmental Protection Agency kicked off its celebration of "Hispanic Heritage Month" with an e-mail message featuring Che Guevara along with his famous slogan, "Hasta la Victoria Siempre."

Let's hope these U.S. civil servants were innocently unaware of some of Che Guevara's other slogans:

* "The U.S. is the great enemy of mankind!"

* "Against those hyenas [Americans] there is no option but extermination!"

*" We will bring the war to the imperialist enemies' very home, to his places of work and recreation. The imperialist enemy must feel like a hunted animal wherever he moves. Thus we'll destroy him [the U.S.].

* "We must keep our hatred [against the U.S.] alive and fan it to paroxysm!"

* "If the nuclear missiles had remained [in Cuba] we would have fired them against the heart of the U.S. including New York City. The victory of socialism is well worth millions of atomic victims!"

(Full documentation for all of the above here.)

U.S. taxpayers pay U.S. government employees to celebrate the author of the charming sentiments above.  Fine.  As usual, only a few Americans of Cuban heritage have complained about the EPA's "gaffe."  As usual, most of the people Che Guevara craved to incinerate view this EPA "gaffe" as silly obsession by hyper-sensitive and loudmouthed Cuban-Americans.

But Che Guevara's hate-obsession was actually the U.S.  Most of the defenseless Cubans he murdered in cold blood he murdered because he thought they were affiliated with the U.S. ("U.S.-backed" Batista, the CIA, etc.).  In fact, probably 99 and a half percent of the men (and boys, and some women) his regime murdered had no affiliation with Batista whatsoever, and the vast majority had fought the Batista regime -- but alas, as non-communists.

Since the U.S. government insists on these ethnic celebrations, here's an idea: instead of celebrating a foreign "Hispanic" who dreamed of incinerating and entombing millions of U.S. citizens and obliterating the U.S. as a political entity, why not celebrate a U.S. citizen of Hispanic heritage who voluntarily put his life repeatedly on the line to defend the U.S.?  Better still, this American of Hispanic heritage played a key role in capturing the foreign Hispanic who craved to murder millions of Americans! 

I know this sounds crazy, Obama administration.  But it just might work! 

EPA, meet Felix Rodriguez.  Some background:

As a 19-year-old  volunteer for Brigada 2506 (the Bay of Pigs freedom-fighters), Cuban-born Felix Rodriguez infiltrated Communist Cuba weeks before what came to be known as the Bay of Pigs invasion, organizing underground freedom-fighters, planning the sabotage of key roads and bridges, staying a step ahead of the Castro's secret police and their KGB coaches.  Almost half of his band of brothers in the infiltration teams died in front of Soviet-armed firing squads, after KGB-tutored torture.  Felix knew the odds.  He volunteered anyway, along with hundreds of other young Cuban exiles of the time.

After the Best and Brightest stabbed the Bay of Pigs freedom-fighters in the back on the bloody Bay of Pigs beachhead, Rodriguez again foiled the Communist dragnet by slipping into the Venezuelan embassy and escaping a year later to Florida.  After the Best and Brightest stabbed the freedom-fighters again and twisted the blade with the Kennedy-Khrushchev swindle (that pledged the U.S. to protect Castro's Soviet beachhead), Rodriguez, along with hundreds of his Bay of Pigs Band of Brothers, enlisted in the U.S. Army.

On the day he gained his U.S. citizenship in 1969, Rodriguez celebrated the honor by volunteering for combat in Viet-Nam.  "I lost the country of my birth to Communism," he explained.  "I know freedom must be protected. And I feel I owe it to my adopted country."

Felix flew over 300 helicopter combat missions in Viet-Nam and was shot down five times.  He won the coveted Intelligence Star for Valor from the CIA and nine Crosses for Gallantry from the Republic of South Vietnam.  Later he battled Communists in El Salvador using a helicopter "mobile strike unit" scheme he developed in Viet-Nam.  He flew over 100 combat missions in Central America, captured the FMLF's top commander, and helped crush those Communist- terrorists decisively.  All this was volunteer work.

Later, as a CIA operative, Rodriguez played a key role in tracking down and capturing Che Guevara in Bolivia and was the last to question him.  "Finally I was face to face with the assassin of thousands of my countrymen, of hundreds of my patriot friends," he recalls.  But his mission was trying to save Che's life, to transport him to the Southern Command in Panama for questioning.

Alas, Felix's Bolivian allies viewed the matter differently.  And it was, after all, their nation under Communist attack.  So they decided on a policy that has since become a favorite among Americans who encounter (so-called) endangered species on their property: "Shoot, shovel, and shut up."  

Castro really wants Felix Rodriguez's head and has sent hit team after hit team after hit team (including one lent to him by his late chum Yasser Arafat) to murder Felix and his family in Florida.  In May 1975 General Joaquin Zenteno, a Bolivian officer who worked with Rodriguez on Che's capture, was murdered on a Paris street.

"You're next," heard Felix Rodriguez when he picked up the phone a few days later.  "Click."

"When you get to Miami," Cuban political prisoner Roberto Martin-Perez heard from one of his jailers the day of his release in 1987, "tell your friend Felix Rodriguez his days are numbered. It's one of Fidel's top priorities."

But Felix Rodriguez has foiled all of Castro's murder plots against him, and until last year, he served as the proud president of The Bay of Pigs Veterans Association.

Shall we hold our breath for a "Hispanic" of this caliber to be celebrated by Obama's EPA?