U.S. Military to Dismantle Biden’s Botched $320 Million Gaza Pier
The Wall Street Journal: “The Pentagon spent $320 million and engaged 1,000 soldiers and sailors to open a major maritime corridor.”
After spending $320 million and risking the lives of hundreds of U.S. servicemen and engineers, the Biden administration is finally pulling the plug on the floating pier off the coast of Gaza.
“The U.S. military-built pier to carry humanitarian aid to Gaza will be dismantled and brought home,” the Associated Press reported Wednesday. The troubled “pier operated for fewer than 25 days after its installation May 16, and aid agencies used it only about half that time due to security concerns,” the news agency added.
Gaza's floating pier, designed to facilitate aid into the strip, is set to be shut down — less than two months after the US installed it at an estimated cost of $320 million. pic.twitter.com/IdVOCnVpRe
— DW News (@dwnews) July 17, 2024
Even before the pier could get operational, Palestinian terrorists shelled the construction site, damaging engineering equipment and reportedly injuring at least one U.S. worker. “Members of a terror group in the Gaza Strip launched mortars at an under-construction pier for a US-led project to bring aid into the Palestinian enclave,” The Times of Israel reported on April 24.
The Israeli TV channel i24NEWS reported Thursday:
The US said on Thursday that it had closed its humanitarian aid pier on the Gazan coast.
According to a statement by USAID, 19 million pounds of aid had been transferred (almost 9,000 tons) since the maritime pier opened in May.
US closes Gaza humanitarian pier – 19 million pounds of aid transferred
Pier ‘improved the protection of humanitarian workers and the facilitation of humanitarian operations in the context of the maritime corridor,’ USAID saysIn collaboration with international partners, the Defense Department and the UN shipped the aid from the Cypriot port of Larnaca. The statement said that the aid was enough to feed 450,000 people for a month.
“This effort has improved the protection of humanitarian workers and the facilitation of humanitarian operations in the context of the maritime corridor,” USAID said.
Despite the closure, USAID stressed that Israel must continue facilitating the entry of aid into the Gaza Strip. US aid will continue to flow via the Ashdod port of southern Israel.
The closure comes after numerous problems encountered in the pier’s operations, with bad weather in the seas forcing it to temporarily halt activity several times.
QUESTION: Any update on Biden's botched $320 pier in Gaza?
KIRBY: Bad weather I guess pic.twitter.com/cAao94ZsQD
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) June 17, 2024
In March, President Joe Biden announced the plan to build a pier for aid deliveries to Gaza. “I’m directing the US military to lead an emergency mission to establish a temporary pier in the Mediterranean on the Gaza coast that can receive large ships carrying food, water, medicine and temporary shelters,” President Biden declared.
“This temporary pier would enable a massive increase in the amount of humanitarian assistance getting into Gaza every day,” the president boasted. The ill-thought-out project repeatedly ran into trouble due to rough seas, bad weather, and maintenance issues.
The pier project, operational only for four weeks, was built at a heavy cost. “The Pentagon spent $320 million and engaged 1,000 soldiers and sailors to open a major maritime corridor,” The Wall Street Journal noted on May 25.
The Israeli military, engaged in bitter fighting with Hamas terrorists, diverted troops to secure President Biden’s faltering project. “Israel has agreed to provide security for the temporary pier the U.S. military is planning to build in Gaza. Under the plans being discussed …, the Israel Defense Forces would establish a “security bubble” to protect the U.S. personnel building the pier as well as the individuals involved in offloading and distributing the aid,” Politico reported on March 26, citing a U.S. official.
While the Biden White House was spending hundreds of millions of dollars to get aid to Gazans via floating pier and airdrops, Hamas was firing rockets at humanitarian crossings — killing Israeli soldiers securing aid supplies into Gazax
Netanyahu visits Hamas stronghold of Rafah
Two months after the IDF launched the ground operation to capture Rafah, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited the Hamas stronghold, Israeli media reported Tuesday afternoon.
Prime Minister Netanyahu vowed not to relinquish control over the strategic Philadelphi Corridor between Gaza and Egypt. The corridor is riddled with tunnels used weapons smuggling and moving terrorist fighters across the border.
היום עם לוחמינו ברפיח. רק הלחץ הצבאי עוזר לנו להחזיר את חטופינו. pic.twitter.com/6YQ9Q272pL
— Benjamin Netanyahu – בנימין נתניהו (@netanyahu) July 18, 2024
The Jerusalem Post reported to the details of the visit
cause in Gaza as well as the heroism of its soldiers while he was in Washington.
It’s essential for Israel to hold onto the Rafah Crossing and the strategic buffer zone between Egypt and Gaza known as the Philadelphi Corridor, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Thursday during his first visit there since Israel seized the area in May.“The understanding that our possession of the Philadelphi Corridor and the Rafah crossing are essential only grew stronger” during this visit, Netanyahu told the soldiers serving there.
He spoke as efforts continued for a deal to secure the release of the remaining 120 hostages in Gaza. The issue of control of the Philadelphi Corridor has been one of the sticking points in the talks, with security officials stating that other options were possible, including an underground barrier that would prevent weapons from smuggling in that area.
היום ברפיח, עד לניצחון. pic.twitter.com/Ii7NUWmgCl
— Benjamin Netanyahu – בנימין נתניהו (@netanyahu) July 18, 2024
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We could not bring back lethal military gear from Afghanistan before it fell into the hands of the Taliban but we are dragging this broken, third-rate pier back from the Mediterranean? How much is this going to cost?
I get what you’re saying. But, this equipment – known as JLOTS – is bespoke and expensive because of it. We don’t have an endless supply of these temporary pier systems it like we do the (mostly) consumable supplies (small arms, ammo, outdated drones, etc) that we left the Afghanistan forces in advance of our haphazard departure. The pier system is designed to be used for a limited time, recovered and returned to its home storage ports.
In that case it wasn’t a question of our needs, but depriving the Taliban of weapons and money (from selling the weapons). At the very least we should have destroyed what we didn’t take back.
The VAST majority of the equipment the Taliban ‘acquired’ was collected as Afghanistan National Security Forces collapsed like old ladies at an August fair….all across the country. We tend to just think about the fall of Kandahar and what we could see on TV at the time. But, the reality is whatever we left at Kandahar paled in comparison to the equipment that we left the ANSF in advance of our departure. For instance, Bagram (about 500km from Kandahar) alone was a depot-sized store of equipment which fell to the Taliban shortly after our last bird was off the ground.
The reality is when we decided to completely abandon the country taking away the ANSF close air support, what happened became a fait accompli to include the equipment we had supplied the ANSF over the years.
“We don’t have an endless supply of these temporary pier systems”
I know I’d climb broken glass and fly Boeing to be the second user of this torn and broken wreck, how about you?
This is why the real DoD motto is, ‘Mind over Matter: They don’t mind and you ‘don’t matter.’
of course it will cost the taxpayers $350 million to dismantle
If that does not symbolize the Biden Afdministration, does anything?
and the billions spent on ev chargers>>none built
solyndra
every project they have pushed through onto the backs of the middle class
don’t forget fisker motors.
It should become a permanent national monument to the Biden Administration. The cut pieces should be dumped in a scrap heap somewhere in the neighborhood of Riggs and 16th — or, perhaps, K Street at Farragut Square — with no reshaping or re-engineering permitted. Signage permitted, though — lots and lots of signage. Free FJB “I did this” stickers will be made available to visitors at the Information Booth.
Morons. Our entire government is run by unaccountable morons.
Comparing our entire government to unaccountable morons is an insult to unaccountable morons everywhere.
The administration’s record for incompetence is peerless.
But nobody ever gets docked for it.
How about Democrats dismantling Biden’s Botched $320 Gazillion Presidency?
The military told him it wouldn’t work and he did it any way. They mobilized one of the oldest and slowest ships in the na… I mean Army. Yes, it was an Army ship they sent. It took a couple of weeks to prep and get underway. It was a fiasco from start to finish.
This, exactly. The unpredictable Mediterranean Mistral & Sirocco winds (or whatever they’re called on the far east part of the Med) OFTEN create sea-states that FAR exceed the design limitations of JLOTS. It was always going to fail. Also, it was NEVER designed to be introduced into a beachhead we didn’t already own. The mission brief was always as a follow-on element of a Marine Amphibious landing. I’ve seen it deployed a couple times. As designed, it takes scores of service members on the beach to make it work correctly.
FWIW, I’m not sure exactly how this installation was transported and installed. But, when I’ve seen it deployed there were a number of Naval and highly specialized Merchant Marine ships involved, particularly when they’re setting up fuel supply as well. It’s quite a complicated feat of engineering.
You’d think that given how old so many of our “leaders” are they would have learned from past mistakes.
Nah.
In a sane world, dismantling a pier meant for the Palestinians because it is being destroyed and abused by the Palestinians would tell the world the Palestinians are not a good faith partner and maybe, just maybe, are the overall aggressors against Israel. Of course, we don’t live in that world, we live in on where idiot Westerners call for the destruction of our ally to placate a people who themselves said killing all Jews is their goal.
“dismantling a pier meant for the Palestinians because it is being destroyed and abused by the Palestinians”
Bring to mind a party conversation I once had with a neighbor of mine in Alexandria whose job was to “fortify” and repair the primate enclosures at the National Zoo.
Make no mistake, if they succeeded killing all Jews, we would be next.
They would become sitting ducks for target practice for terrorists.
Even if that could be minimized, there still is no way to distribute the bulk packages of humanitarian aid to the civilians on the street who need it. It would become free-for-all in streets with Hamas forcibly seizing it.
UN could bring aid from the egypt side, better idea.
“UN could bring aid from the egypt side, better idea.”
So it’s already in Hamas hands before it even gets over the border. Smart thinking!
Oddly enough, a week ago, the pier supposedly only cost $230 million (according to James Nault’s July 10 post). The cost jumped a hundred million dollars that fast?
The Big Guy had to get his cut.
It was originally priced at $320 million. Check the original reports. I don’t know where the $230M figure came from.
I guess Hamas we’ll have to find a new place to get supplies
We’ll == will … Damn auto correction
Gaza Pier : Biden.
Same : Same.
Best foreign policy president ever!