Cuba has protested its place on the U.S. list of terror-prone nations slated for extra airport screening. But a look at the country's record as a state sponsor of terror proves that its placement is well-earned.

On Tuesday, Cuba blasted the U.S. for including it on a list of 14 nations whose nationals would be subject to extra-screening on inbound U.S. flights in the wake of the attempted terror attack over Detroit on Christmas Day.

"Everyone knows they are politically motivated and only designed to justify the blockade against Cuba," a Cuban foreign ministry minion protested to the Associated Press Tuesday. And columnists such as the Washington Post's Eugene Robinson echoed that, arguing Cuba didn't belong on the list because ordinary Cubans had no access to explosives and no history of radical Islam.

The arguments beg the question. No, Cuba is not a Somalia-like terrorist breeding ground. But it is a state sponsor of terrorism. It's earned that designation since 1982, providing critical support to nonstate terrorist groups. "Without state sponsors, terrorist groups would have greater difficulty obtaining the funds, weapons, materials, and secure areas they require to plan and conduct operations," the State Department Web site says.

Contrary to the Cuban official's claim, that's not based on politics, but on concrete criteria. "We think it's a well-earned designation," said State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley Wednesday.

He's right. Cuba is an enemy that will support any group that violently targets the U.S., including terror sponsors like Iran and even al-Qaida. The dictatorship seems to have gone quiet lately, mainly harboring terrorists and laundering cash, but that won't last.

Its current project is cozying up to terror-kingpin Iran, offering communication facilities for espionage against the U.S. as well as jamming of dissident broadcasts from its Bejucal base.

It's also busy playing innkeeper to some of the world's most odious terrorists — all of whom seem to find each other in Havana. Spain's ETA Basque terrorists (who have ties to al-Qaida) have a shingle in Havana. Colombia's FARC and ELN, whom recent news events out of Africa seem to show have a relationship with the drug trade, also have a welcome mat in Cuba.

Aside from that crowd, dangerous terrorists from the past roost in the island dictatorship, too. Some 77 U.S. fugitives, like Puerto Rican Machetero terrorists, and Black Panthers like Assata Shakur on the lam for terrorism decades ago, now hide out in Havana.

None of this is surprising. Far from his cuddly image as a bearded man of the people with an outdated political philosophy, Cuba's Fidel Castro is "actually a pioneer in 20th century terrorism," according to historian Humberto Fontova.

Castro's rise to power came of a violent terror campaign against Cuban democracy, bombing shopping malls, nightclubs and public squares at a cost of many civilian lives.

After a three-year campaign, he toppled the government in 1959.

Since then, he has exported terror to dozens of nations and trained about 42,000 terrorists. That sorry list includes the Palestine Liberation Organization, Hezbollah, the Irish Republican Army, FARC, ETA, the Weathermen and Hamas, all of whom "profited" from Castro's innovative uses of the car bomb, the airline hijacking, the terror training camp and the 9/11-style strike on civilians.

That detail is important: In 1962, Cuban agents aligned with the Fair Play for Cuba Committee plotted to blow up New York's subways with 500 tons of TNT under Bloomingdale's, Gimbel's and Macy's on the busy Friday after Thanksgiving. The plot was foiled by J. Edgar Hoover's FBI.

Defectors later revealed that he also attempted to blow up a Miami-area nuclear plant in 1983 following the U.S. invasion of Grenada that chased Cuban troops out.

With a record like that, there's no doubt that Cuba is poised to threaten the U.S. as the terror war goes on. The only shame is those who forget history and criticize the U.S. for checking this.