Mr. Reynolds at Instapundit will be thrilled to read this story of complaints about security at the port of New Orleans and points upriver.

A top New Orleans shipping industry official blasted the Coast Guard Thursday for scaling back the post-Sept. 11 sea marshal program while boosting reliance on local private security guards with little or no training to guard ships or deal with terrorists.

Channing Hayden, president of the Steamship Association of Louisiana, said private security guards now boarding vessels deemed risky by the Coast Guard offer little protection from terrorists determined to enter the country or to stage an attack on a local port.

"Putting security guards on ships to watch a (potential) al-Qaida terrorist is like putting a canary in a coal mine," he said during a luncheon meeting of the Traffic and Transportation Club of Greater New Orleans in Metairie. "Rent-a-cops don't do the job." [...]

Hayden said his complaints are not about money. He said ship operators are willing to pay the government a user fee to cover the cost of guarding suspicious vessels, as long as those guards are trained military personnel capable of responding to a real threat.