Gotta love the attitude of the IMB - "don't fight back or you might piss them off".
I vote we take the IMB board members, stick them out there in a boat, and see how THEY like getting shot at and taken hostage!
Yeah, licensing privateers might not be such a hot idea, especially with what happened with Blackwater and some other private security firms over in Iraq.
I remember one story from back in '05. One private security detachment, ostensibly from an "engineering firm"
, that was assigned to guard a convoy turned out to be real trigger happy. Any vehicle that came within rifle range, or anything along the side of the road they didn't like the looks of, they opened up on.
They continued along shooting up the countryside until they came to a checkpoint manned by US Marines. When the Marines tried to stop them, these dumb f#####s kept going and opened up on the Marines!
The Marines understandably took great offense at this, whistled up some support, and a few miles down the road got the convoy stopped. Whereupon they grabbed these idiot security guards, stripped them down to their BVD's, and put them face down in the dirt with the muzzle of an M-16 at the back of their necks.
From what I saw of Marines my 20 years in the Navy, I'd say those young gents showed incredible restraint in not at least beating the living crap out of those idiots. I'd imagine the thought of capping them then and there and increasing the intelligence level of the gene pool was at least a passing thought as well.
Those morons didn't realize how fortunate they were - to have opened fire on US Marines in a war zone and at the end of the day to still be drawing breath. And what did these prizewinners do once they were carted up and shipped back to the U.S.? They tried to file suit against the U.S. government for the "harrassment" they endured at the hands of the Marines.