The temporary pier
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Yeah, "temporary," as in, "It only lasted a few weeks."
https://apnews.com/article/gaza-pier-damage-weather-seas-boats-f45634fb85e2ac6aec9b814c36ea3526
The U.S.-built temporary pier that has been taking humanitarian aid to starving Palestinians for less than two weeks will be removed from the coast of Gaza to be repaired after getting damaged in rough seas and weather, the Pentagon said Tuesday.
Over the next two days, the pier will be pulled from the beach and sent to the southern Israeli city of Ashdod, where U.S. Central Command will repair it, Pentagon spokeswoman Sabrina Singh told reporters. She said the fixes will take “at least over a week” and then the pier will need to be anchored back into the beach in Gaza.
“From when it was operational, it was working, and we just had sort of an unfortunate confluence of weather storms that made it inoperable for a bit,” Singh said. “Hopefully just a little over a week, we should be back up and running.”
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The Pier is reflective of the Biden presidency. We spent more than we should for something that didn't work for very long, when it did work it didn't do everything it was supposed to do and much of what it did, was siphoned off for nefarious purposes.
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Once again, the Babylon Bee (see post #2) is prophetic.
We don't want to say "We told you so, but..."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2024/08/27/gaza-pier-inspector-general/
The watchdog for the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), which oversees Washington’s humanitarian work abroad, cited various “external factors” that it said impaired the agency’s effort to distribute food and other supplies brought to Gaza over the pier. Among them, according to the report, were the security requirements imposed by the Pentagon to protect U.S. military personnel working aboard the structure just offshore.
“Multiple USAID staff expressed concerns” that the Biden administration’s focus on the pier undercut the agency’s advocacy for opening more land crossings — an approach, the report said, deemed “more efficient and proven.”
“Once the President issued the directive,” the report states, “the Agency’s focus was to use [the pier] as effectively as possible.”
The pier was attached to Gaza’s coastline in May amid rising concerns of famine that prompted the Pentagon to begin airdropping food into Gaza. But from the start, the mission was dogged by logistical and security setbacks, including rough seas that broke apart the structure, looting of aid trucks on land and a persistent logjam moving food from a staging area ashore due to worries that Israeli bombardment would kill the workers tasked with distributing it. The operation was halted for good last month.
WaPo does the obligatory anticipated "pounce."
The report is likely to embolden Biden’s critics who have questioned why he put U.S. troops in harm’s way for a mission that could have been avoided if he had successfully persuaded Israeli officials to curtail their blockade on Gaza established in October after Hamas militants led the deadly cross-border attack that triggered the war. While Israeli officials have said they are allowing aid into Palestinian territory, humanitarian groups assess that it is insufficient to feed the roughly 2 million people trapped by the violence.
