Biden’s Gaza “Pier to Nowhere” a Disaster and National Embarrassment, Breaks Apart
“This is a larger issue than anything happening in that impossible corner of the globe. Over the weekend, we saw yet more indications of an empire in decline deteriorating from bad to pathetic”
We have been following the evolution of the Biden Gaza pier disaster right from the beginning announcement, Biden to Announce Plans to Build Port in Gaza for Humanitarian Aid Shipments, to planning, Gaza Pier Will Take Around 60 Days and 1,000 Troops to Complete, to criticism of that plan, Biden’s Gaza Floating Port Plan Generating Concern Among Military Professionals.
That criticism, including this gem, “I don’t know a single maritime professional who thinks this is a good idea given the location and conditions ashore, but orders are orders,” was, it turns out, totally justified.
First, the concept itself was ridiculous, given the fact that it was entirely predictable that Hamas would steal any aid provided before it could get to the Palestinian “civilian” population, meaning that the plan had nothing to do with aiding the Palestinians, as the few decent Republicans in Congress, and Professor Jacobson, recognized:
Absolutely, Israel doesn't want or need this. Biden refuses to let Israel win. American troops are being inserted into the conflict so Biden can win the Michigan pro-Hamas vote. https://t.co/vXBzhnA8mz
— William A. Jacobson (@wajacobson) March 7, 2024
So the U.S. military is literally building infrastructure for Hamas—which is formally designated a terrorist group by that very same U.S. military/State Dept.
Evil. https://t.co/2eSACc9p0C
— Josh Hammer (@josh_hammer) March 7, 2024
Second, even while it was under construction, the stupid Gaza pier came under attack: Report: Gaza Terrorists Attack U.S. Humanitarian Pier During Construction Work:
Talking about biting the hand that feeds. Palestinian terrorists on Wednesday attacked the U.S. pier being constructed off the coast of Gaza, the Israeli TV channel i24NEWS reported.
Gaza “terrorists launched mortars at the maritime construction site, damaging several pieces of engineering equipment,” the TV channel revealed. ” In addition, one person was slightly injured while running to a protected area.”
The U.S. military is involved in the construction of the floating dock. It is unclear if American servicemen or civilian contractors were present at the site during the terrorist attack.
This is not the first time Palestinian terrorists have targeted humanitarian efforts to help the Gazans. In the past, Hamas terrorists have used delivery of food supplies to ambush Israeli troops. Terrorists have repeatedly attacked IDF soldiers, assisting civilians to evacuate the combat zones.
Again, totally predictable.
Third, three American servicemen were recently injured, one of them critically, off the coast of Gaza working to get supplies to the pier: U.S. Soldier Critically Injured During Gaza Pier Operation, 2 Other Service Members Hurt:
A U.S. soldier assigned to the Gaza pier mission was seriously injured on Thursday and medically evacuated to Israel, two defense officials confirmed to USNI News.
The soldier was working on the staging platform two miles off the coast of Gaza, where trucks filled with aid packages are driven from cargo ships onto Army watercraft, the defense officials told USNI News. At the time of the injury, the roll-on roll-off cargo ship MV Benevides was attached to the platform.
Vice Adm. Brad Cooper, the deputy commander of U.S. Central Command, told reporters on Thursday that a total of three service members were injured in non-combat-related incidents at sea.
“Three injuries, two were very minor injuries and those individuals returned to duty. One individual is undergoing care at a local Israeli hospital,” Cooper told reporters during a Thursday Pentagon briefing.
Typical Biden spokesperson minimizing extremely serious injuries a U.S. soldier.
Fourth, there are conflicting reports about whether any aid has yet to reach Palestinian civilians at all, From the Gray Lady last week: No Gaza Aid Delivered Through U.S.-Built Pier Has Been Distributed, Pentagon Says:
None of the food and supplies that have entered the Gaza Strip through a U.S.-built temporary pier in its first five days of operation have been distributed to Palestinians by aid organizations, Gen. Patrick S. Ryder, the Pentagon spokesman, said at a news briefing on Tuesday.
General Ryder said that 569 metric tons of aid had made it onto Gaza’s shore, but that those supplies had yet to be parceled out by humanitarian organizations.
On Saturday, hungry crowds looted several World Food Program trucks transporting aid that had been delivered through the pier, prompting the agency to suspend deliveries of aid arriving at the pier on Sunday and Monday.
General Ryder also said that after discussions with Israel and the United Nations, alternative routes for the safe movement of staff and cargo had been established. The aid is now being taken to warehouses for further distribution, he said.
“We do anticipate that assistance will be distributed in the coming days, of course, conditions permitting,” he said.
Fifth, bad, but not very bad, weather has caused a small Army tug boat transporting a portion of the pier to Ashkelon, Israel for safe harbor to run aground. A larger Army vessel sent to pull the tug off the beach also ran aground, as have two other small Army tugs near the Gaza pier: Four US vessels run aground near Gaza pier:
Heavy seas battered the US maritime humanitarian mission to Gaza on Saturday, US Central Command (Centcom) said, with four vessels serving a floating aid delivery pier breaking free from their moorings….
Two of the affected vessels were now anchored on the beach near the pier and the other two were beached on the coast of Israel near Ashkelon, Centcom said, adding that efforts to recover the vessels were under way with assistance from the Israeli navy.
Here is some good video and photo evidence of this disaster, off the coast of Ashdod, Israel, which is just north of Ashkelon:
The Landing Craft Mechanized (LCM) “LCM8558” and Modular Warping Tug (MWT) “20” with the U.S. Army’s 7th Transportation Brigade, which were Beached on Saturday near the City of Ashdod in Southern Israel after a Severe Storm, have now been Removed from the Shore by the… pic.twitter.com/lBqR0EA39d
— OSINTdefender (@sentdefender) May 27, 2024
Thanks to the Israelis for helping us avert total disaster.
The mainstream, legacy media has been mostly silent, as Kurt Schlichter noticed:
Shocking no one, a quick search for Gaza Pier comes back with zero results showing this debacle.
Not the WaPo, NYT, CNN, NBC, etc.
Did I miss it? Kinda feel it might have gotten some coverage if the president was named Trump. Of course, I do not watch the regime media… https://t.co/wEfMPbfvl1
— Kurt Schlichter (@KurtSchlichter) May 27, 2024
For me, the most disturbing part of the whole affair is how benign the weather was that caused this debacle.
From the Jerusalem Post: US ship pulls landing craft off Ashdod beach:
A US landing craft that became beached on the Ashdod shore was freed from the sand, a US military official told The Jerusalem Post on Sunday.
The LCM 8558 landing craft has been working with a US-built floating pier off the coast. It was beached on Saturday after seeking to help free a US army tug that was helping move the floating pier from an area off the Gaza coast to near Ashdod due to adverse weather conditions.
The army tug resembles a flat section of the floating pier, so it was initially mistaken for a part of the floating pier.
So how “adverse” were the weather conditions?
The US was moving the floating pier toward an area near Ashdod because of the high swells that emerged on Thursday and Friday. The swells were around 1.5 meters, and winds gusted to some 20 knots.
These higher seas and waves apparently necessitated moving the pier. It is also not the first time the pier has been affected by weather conditions. When it was first constructed near Ashdod, it had to wait to be deployed because of turbulent waters.
[emphasis added]
This has to be a joke. Wind that “gusts” to 20 mph or so, meaning that the sustained winds were probably 10-15 mph, was so “severe” that parts of the pier had to be moved to Israel and four Army boats ran aground????
I know I was/am a submarine guy, but we routinely, while on deployment in the North Atlantic, and other places ;), prayed for weather this benign anytime we were near the surface. This is basically like weather slightly worse than what you find at the beach. And if Biden’s $300+ million Gaza pier and supporting vessels can’t take swells 4.5 feet, i.e. up to your chest, high, pardon my French, but who designed and is running this piece of crap???
Well, of course, Schlichter has the answer:
I am stunned the Gaza pier debacle was a debacle. https://t.co/iN7RdxheXr
— Kurt Schlichter (@KurtSchlichter) May 27, 2024
And do yourself a favor and read this brief summary from our favorite Navy blogger, CDR Salamander:
This old operational planner has one bit of advice to Congress in their role of having oversight of the Executive Branch; subpoena the Decision Brief for the Gaza pier operation.
This was on the lowest of low scale of military operations, Humanitarian Assistance/Disaster Response. There is little to nothing classified about any of this rump of a capability. Call in member of the Joint Staff who were involved in this planning – and I would prefer if you could find a few terminal O5/6 to testify as well. You might actually enjoy some candor.
The Commander’s Intent, the Higher Direction and Guidance, the Planning Assumptions, the Constraints and Restraints, the Critical Vulnerability analysis, etc. It is all there. If not, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Secretary of Defense should tell the American people to their face.
This is a larger issue than anything happening in that impossible corner of the globe. Over the weekend, we saw yet more indications of an empire in decline deteriorating from bad to pathetic.
From the time the first load came off the pier, the aid barely made it past 300 meters until it disappeared into Hamasistan.
And now, finally, the worst news of all, from, amazingly enough, CNN: US pier constructed off Gaza has broken apart:
The temporary pier constructed by the US military to transport aid into Gaza broke apart in heavy seas on Sunday in a major blow to the American-led effort to create a maritime corridor for humanitarian supplies into the war-torn enclave, according to four US officials.
Part of the pier, which consists of a narrow causeway to drive aid into Gaza and a wider parking area to drop off supplies transported by ship, disconnected on Sunday, the officials said. The parking area will have to be reconnected to the causeway before the pier can be used again.
The setback came one day after heavy seas forced two small US Army vessels to beach in Israel, according to US Central Command, while another two vessels broke free of their moorings and were anchored near the pier.
The effort to reassemble the causeway and connect it once again to the parking area will resume when sea conditions allow, officials said.
The pier, which cost $320 million, had only begun operating on May 17 when heavy seas forced the maritime shipments to stop one week later on May 24, two days before part of the pier disconnected. It is unclear when shipments will resume.
And now we get even more detail on the weather capabilities of this temporary pier system:
The temporary pier, called the Joint Logistics Over the Shore (JLOTS), requires very good sea conditions to operate. CNN reported previously that JLOTS can only be operated safely in a maximum of 3-foot waves and winds less than approximately 15 miles per hour.
Heavier sea conditions delayed the deployment of the pier for several weeks, as the system sat docked in the Israeli port of Ashdod waiting for favorable conditions.
Are you kidding me???????? Max of 3-foot waves???? Hahahahaha. This is just stupid.
More good stuff from X:
Vessels supporting the $320M floating pier have broken free from their moorings and run aground…on Memorial Day weekend.
This, after Pentagon spokesperson Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder admitted this week, that none of the aid unloaded from pier off the coast of Gaza has made it to the… pic.twitter.com/cYZkt2m8Gs
— Bree A Dail (@breeadail) May 25, 2024
The gaza pier, just like the Afghan debacle, was destined to fail from the beginning due to the complete idiocy of the planning. It showcases a US military that is completely inept & will embolden our enemies especially China.
— Military Analysis, Strategy & GeoPolictics (@CostaLefty65147) May 27, 2024
What in the living dumbshit incompetent fucking shit is this?
Biden's $320M Gaza Pier Has Detached & Drifted Onto Israeli Beach
Several US Army vessels have also become stuck in embarrassing mishap…https://t.co/kqIel4wHWo
— FTMFW (@FTMFW77) May 25, 2024
It’s a debacle, and a national embarrassment.
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Comments
The important thing is not the pier, but that we betrayed an ally.
The entire thing is such a fiasco. A cluster-[reproductive act]. A balls-up. What we ancients called a Chinese fire drill when we were younger.
I see this and other examples of this nation’s decline and fall.
I could weep. I’ve no idea what to do.
Be grateful you’re not in your 20’s.
I’m even more grateful than I left. No descendants.
D-Day vets would have constructed Mulberry harbors. Why have we forgotten lessons learned 80+ years ago?
Because history started the day George Floyd died.
D Day = Mulberry
FJB Day = Malarkey
Well, one difference is we were invading France on 6 June when we built the Mulberry harbor in French territorial water. Oh. . . Never mind.
We are literally effing up everything we touch.
Who is this “we”? I grew up in a meritocracy and even in my left of center days opposed quotas.
“We” in the sense of the US admininstration and DOD.
IFFFFF THIS PIER HAD BEEN BUILT CORRECTLY
YOU’D SEE MSM ( lying or not)
EXCLAIMING THE PIER WAS BUILT BY THE
ELITE First Womens first trans collaboration first african american run team
2+2=5
I thought two plus two equaled two-de-two.
Define the word temporary and use it in a sentence:
Temporary: Something that does not last long. The 320 million temporary pier in Gaza lasted 5 days.
“This was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to destroy the D pier and our planet began to tell Ds ‘get lost.'”
Global rightening!
The oceans began to rise? Isn’t that called the tide? Maybe they should have considered that?
“The pier was strictly temporary and it only had to last until Michigan and Minnesota were won for the Democrats in the 2024 Presidential Election”
The Gaza pier was a debacle.
Define the word debacle and use it in a sentence.
Debacle: A fancy word for making something worse. It will be a debacle if the US spends another 32o million to fix a 320 million temporary pier only to have it fall apart again.
Just call it the Stormy Daniels pier.
Or the Harris Pier, from how fast it went d—
And like Stormy Daniels
The pier gives aid and comfort to our enemies….. and falls apart under a little adverse pressure.
It would have been less of a disaster if Biden sent the floating pier to the Courthouse and sent Robert DeNiro to Gaza.
‘There are never waves bigger than 3′ in the Mediterranean.’
-Someone in the Biden Administration.
The waves weren’t very high. The US military is failing.
The available LOTS (sometimes referred to as JLOTS) system is NOT designed for Sea State 3, that means sustained wave action 3.5′ to 5.0′. Back in the early part of this century, there were planes to develop a rapidly deployable JLOTS system that could function in a sustained Sea State 3. It was never developed. So, someone – probably not someone in uniform – decided to take a system that was doomed for failure in that part of the Mediterranean and use it anyways. I have no doubt civilian leadership was told that the chances of such an implementation failing were high considering the location of the pier and the time of year.
I will give partial credit to the military engineers who in all likelihood have been preaching the gospel of “A new design is needed to handle even *normal* sea states in our area of operations” and being told to sit down and shut up for decades. When these engineers got the orders to put an inadequate design into operations, they saluted, said “Yes, Ma’am’ to their superiors of whatever gender, and promptly went back in their well-documented objections and suggestions to print out copies of emails and memos they had been sending and getting ignored all this time.
In the first place, why develop a system that cannot survive 3 foot waves? Where in the world would it be useful? Even Lake Michigan often has 6-footers.
The Mediterranean is an enclosed waterway and not subject to the dangerous storms, large waves, nor surges you might find in oceans and is therefore quite safe. Any crew member who had served on the SS Edmund Fitzgerald would be able to back me up on these facts. /sarc
It’s bringing high speed rail to Gaza.
Gavin Newsom knows some good contractors.
It’s a Pelosi-class pier —
you have to break it first, before you can Build it Back Better.
Beautiful!
And the guys who built it were probably hammered by 8 AM every day.
Well, by the time it’s 8 AM in Washington, the sun is four hours past the yardarm in Israel, so it’s no surprise that they were hammered.
Nice.
Biden is the first white Affirmative Action potus
Are you astute enough to see 65 years into the future?
“As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.”
― H.L. Mencken, 1956
Contrary to what Mencken may have believed about the supposed deficiencies of the “plain folk” , it is our self-anointed moral and intellectual betters who are the true morons and undisputed source of just about every ill we face.
Plenty of morons are out there, too. Elites want Biden for their own, but they get cooperation.
Meh.
Half of America = “Will vote for bribe.”
How many bloody times must I say this:
Nothing to see here, folks. Move along.
while fjb tries to win
the squads approval
america burns
So then, a haiku in the style of Joe Biden… if he could write one.
fjb issued this statement:
I was told we were ordering beers for the hamas people
The big winner in all of this is Jimmy Carter.
Ouch. Tough but true.
Only narcissist-incompetent-dunce, Obama, and, corrupt/witless/stupid Biden, could make Jimmy Carter look like Winston Churchill.
Or Bismarck.
This indefensible pier — providing outrageously undeserved and treasonous succor, sustenance and support to goose-stepping, genocidal, U.S.-hating and Israel-hating Muslim supremacists, Islamofascists and terrorists — represents everything that is wrong with the vile Dhimmi-crats’ manifestly feckless, stupid, gullible, obsequious, morally bankrupt and destructive foreign policy and general dhimmitude.
fjb cant figure it out
I gave them the blueprints that were used on the Edsel
Even if you could ignore the atrocious Biden politics (send supplies he knows will end entirely with Hamas in order to pretend the 3000 calories per person per day Israel sends in is starvation is appalling politics Biden is doing) this incident would have created a major round of court martials of everyone involved if it had happened in the 20th century.
Leave it to Brandon the retarded pedophile and his merry band of incompetent idiots to screw up building a boat dock. You know, those things they’ve had for centuries.
Hey, don’t forget, his cheering section just independently invented the sailboat.
and of course the msm, they will romanticize this return to sailboats
while they of course fly first class
f the gop
for doing nothing legal to stop these leftist pos
By chance I happen to be re-reading a book called THE FAR SHORE by Commander Edward Ellsberg, who besides being a salvage specialist in WW-II, designed and supervised the artificial harbors we built at the Normandy invasion beachheads. This is about that process. I commend it to the attention of all, if only as an example of what we used to be able to do routinely and cannot do anymore.
And I offer the thought that there are numerous hostilities threatening around the world, including in the Pacific [as in Taiwan]. This misadventure is not a recommendation for our logistics capabilities.
Subotai Bahadur
There’s a reason that the Mulberry harbors built at Normandy needed breakwaters to protect them. Apparently the Army Corps stopped teaching that lesson in favor of some DEI focus.
Pronouns are the priority, comrade!
I commend it to the attention of all, if only as an example of what we used to be able to do routinely and cannot do anymore.
In those days the designers and the logistics people were picked for their competence, not the quota boxes they tick.
Army Corps of DEI…..
How much diversity is there in DEI departments?
Added to the backlog. Thanks.
I much enjoy first-hand records of development programs. Particularly compelling is one with the unfortunate trade paperback title King of the Killing Zone.
Biden does for docks what he does for our economy: sink it.
There’s something symbolic in all this…
Looks like Hamas having the Biden* junta as an ally is … er … a mixed blessing.
Jimmy Carter used to be the worst U.S. President of my lifetime. Biden has stolen that status from Carter.
With respect, you seem to have overlooked Obama. Obama was voted the 6th best President in 2014:
#1 George Washington
#2 Abraham Lincoln
#3 Ronald Reagan
#4 39-way tie
#5 Jimmy Carter
#6 Barack Obama
If only we had a maritime warfare branch with centuries of experience with amphibious and port operations in the Mediterranean. With voluminous records of undersea topography, weather, sea states, and surf conditions there.
We could have sent them the 6000 miles across an ocean to build a pier on the unprotected waters of one of the seven seas… instead Biden sent our land warfare one.
And that makes its own perverted sense.
(Unless of course that maritime branch turned down their chance for glory because they knew from experience and training what a farce this would be. In which case my faith in them would be somewhat restored).
Lol. What’s weird is back in the day, the Joint Logistics Over the Shore operation was in fact joint It used elements of the Navy, Marine Corps and Army. That must have changed sometime after 2010, I guess. Any operation that relies on the Army to drive the floatie things is probably doomed for failure, which is why we’ve had a navy as long as we’ve had an Army.
your new woke military
WILL THEY BE GIVEN THE SAME “HONOR” THAT OTHERS IN THE MILITARY CORRECTLY RECEIVED!!?
the military has always been the one section EVEN OVER TEACHERS,
that have always had the admiration of the pro americans
BUT NOW?????
as the military and the local police departments get more and more DEI
cnn:
Aid deliveries from the pier to warehouses inside Gaza were initially hindered by a Hamas drone attack on the IDF “several miles away” from the pier that led to a freeze on convoy movements, and some trucks were looted along one of the distribution paths earlier this week, Vice Admiral Brad Cooper, the deputy commander of United States Central Command, said in a call with reporters on Thursday.
^^^ so theres that^^^^^
and then this COMPLETE LACK OF ENGINEERING KNOWLEDGE!!!:
The temporary pier, called the Joint Logistics Over the Shore (JLOTS), requires very good sea conditions to operate. CNN reported previously that JLOTS can only be operated safely in a maximum of 3-foot waves and winds less than approximately 15 miles per hour.
So interesting to see the folks with such opinions about what Israel should do re: Gaza and Hamas trying to Just Do It.
If they can’t handle passive, known 4.5-foot seas, what they gonna do about an adaptive, provisioned, committed enemy.
Now do dealing with sugar-rockets aimed at your cities.
The Biden Administration will blame the waves on climate change. The media will dutifully report it as so.
Look, it’s 2024, so let’s measure the success of this project by TODAY’S standards.
a) Was the team that built and delivered this sufficiently diverse?
b) Did they use proper pronouns?
c) Did the project lift up Islamic self-esteem?
If the answer to all three is yes, then this project was an astounding success.
Let’s not use old, racist, colonialist standards like “Did the dock actually work?”.
Come on! Functionality is racist!!
I Think it is pretty clear that Trump caused the pier to fall apart. The real question that the media needs to investigate is how did he do it. Does he really have telekinetic powers?
He pissed off the Storm Goddess.
Just like Biden’s presidential campaign.
Dementia Joe signals weakness on the world stage. Rinse repeat.
wonder where chestbreast feeding butts was in all of this?
with his knowledge on roads and transportation construction etc
he must have lent his expertise to the team
He wanted to use the ferry system.
ISWYDT
IFFFFF THIS PIER HAD BEEN BUILT CORRECTLY
YOU’D SEE MSM ( lying or not)
EXCLAIMING THE PIER WAS BUILT BY THE
ELITE First Womens first trans collaboration first african american run team
the pier engineering team is hooking up with the ucla medical school to discuss strategy
All of you have it all wrong. This is a great triumph, perhaps imperfect but still the greatest achievement ever by a transgender military!
Who created the mission to provide aid to people who were holding 5 Americans hostage?
The wreckage of the pier during a storm can highly be called “an Act of God”.
Genesis 12:3 https://www.biblegateway.com/verse/en/Genesis%2012%3A3
Not only did the Biden regime build a pier to resupply Hamas terrorists, but the pier’s breaking up in rough seas means the regime created another opportunity to make American forces look like ridiculous Keystone Kops too.
Mongolia could have built a better oceanic pier…and they have only seen pictures of an ocean.