In April 2024, Joe Biden decided that Gaza’s civilians needed a seaport to help bring food to the beleaguered residents of that tiny enclave.
So he got the excellent builders in the Army Corps of Engineers to construct a “floating dock,” where cargo ships could unload food and medicine. For $230 million, it was a beautiful pier.
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Unfortunately, someone forgot to tell the president that you can’t build a “floating dock” where heavy seas are likely. Indeed, a few days after the pier was put into service, a storm came up and left it a shambles.
We paid $230 million to build the Gaza Pier, and by July, it’ll be dismantled.
Operational for 10 days, at $23 million.
Another biden regime disaster. pic.twitter.com/gkKWGrEN1u
— 🇺🇸ProudArmyBrat (@leslibless) June 19, 2024
Almost all the cargo was stolen before it reached aid warehouses because the Biden administration made no allowances for security.
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
News reports at the time never mentioned that the construction of the pier was not without incident. The Pentagon claimed that only three service members were injured during the operation. Now, an inspector general’s report reveals the truth.
The Pentagon had previously reckoned that three American troops suffered non-combat injuries in building the pier. Now, the report says that number is closer to 62, though it adds: “Based on the information provided, we were not able to determine which of these 62 injuries occurred during the performance of duties or resulted off duty or from pre-existing medical conditions.” If the pier is responsible for even a fracture of those, it is a scandal.
Most distressing of all is the death of an Army sergeant, Quandarius Stanley, who was injured in May 2024 aboard a Navy ship and who passed away some five months later. Treasure as well as blood were forfeited in the effort to build the pier. The dossier reports that more than two-dozen watercraft and other equipment was damaged, amounting to some $31 million in costs. The pier facilitated the delivery of 20 million pounds of food.
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The inspector general’s report shows one mismanaged clusterfark after another. The project began despite the Army and Navy facing “low equipment mission-capable rates and low manning and training levels.”
Related: The Biden Administration Lied About Famine in Gaza, Accusing Israel of a War Crime It Didn’t Commit
“The Army and Navy did not allocate sufficient maintenance, manning, [or] training,” according to the report. The inspector general also found that the Army and Navy “did not organize, train, and equip to a common joint standard” for the so-called “joint logistics over-the-shore” (JLOTS) operation.”
The disjointed nature of the effort contributed to 27 watercraft and other paraphernalia suffering damage costing $31 million to repair, the report found, as “Army- and Navy-specific equipment, including watercraft, piers, and causeways, as well as command, control, and communications systems was not interoperable.”
This week’s report follows a similar review by the US Agency for International Development (USAID) Office of the Inspector General from August 2024 — which found Biden charged ahead with the $230 million pier despite the urgings of multiple federal aid workers.
Mississippi Senator Roger Wicker summed it up: “This irresponsible and expensive experiment defies all logic except the obvious political explanation: to appease the president’s far-left flank.”
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Trying to appease the unappeasable is just plain stupid.
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