We own three dogs. Two are mutts that showed up one day and won't leave. Joni, our third Little Precious, was produced in a reputable union of purebred Shelties. She has a long and respected ancestral trail. She is also dumb as a box of rocks and has vision trouble.

When we take the dogs for a walk, Joni will bark at the same mailbox every time. When she gets close enough to realize it's an inanimate object instead of something scary, she calms down. The next time she sees it she repeats her routine.

Humans are much the same. History tells us most people fear and mistrust anything they can't figure out. When we finally understand the situation, we relax and look for something else to be frightened of. A few decades later we repeat the process; bark at the same mailbox when it first comes into view.

The latest example of this is the current hand wringing over Guantanamo detainees. Our president wants to close the prison in Cuba and move those suspected terrorists elsewhere. But no one will man up and take them.

The fear of terrorists perpetuated over the last few years has convinced all of us we are dealing with some sort of super criminal. Most of the ones I see look like cab drivers.

Richard Reid was comically inept. Those guys recently convicted in Miami seemed like your basic criminal; anti social but not very smart. Terrorists will blow themselves up because they are told to. But that doesn't make them omnipotent.

Yet, state officials and members of Congress have behaved as if the current suspects being held against their will in Guantanamo are super villains from a faraway galaxy. How is it that prisons good enough to hold mass murderers, rapists, mob bosses, and home grown terrorists like Tim McVeigh are not sufficient to control a few illiterate foreigners we found in Afghanistan?

Most of those initially captured are not considered full- fledged terrorists. They were caught up in the adventure or captured because they were in the wrong place at a bad time. The best estimate is that maybe 50 to 80 are legitimate.

If they are eventually convicted of really being terrorists, what are we going to do with them then? If we can't house them until they stand trial, how will we keep them behind bars after they are sentenced?

I'm having a real hard time accepting the explanation that these guys are so heinous and dastardly we can't have them locked up in a federal maximum security prison or keep the area surrounding the prison, an army base, secure from outside attack.

According to experts who study terrorists, not TV news readers or politicians with something to gain, the typical Muslim Jihadist is a young man with limited education who wants to hang out with his buddies and do whatever is necessary to impress them. He has no long term plan. He has no political or religious agenda. He has no special training or superpowers.

So we are afraid of fraternity boys. And I thought Joni was stupid.