The good news: Thanks to God\u2019s underrated sense of irony, President Joe Biden\u2019s administration\u2019s ludicrous plan to build a pier in Gaza without putting U.S. boots on the ground in order to deliver aid that absolutely, positively wouldn\u2019t be stolen by Hamas has been, for the moment, foiled by the unseen element of bad weather that happens every year in the Mediterranean. More\u2019s the pity.<\/p>\n
The bad news: Apparently, \u201cdevout Catholic\u201d Joe Biden can\u2019t take a divine hint<\/a> and the American taxpayer will be on the hook for at least another $22 million to fix the thing so Hamas can restart stealing \u2026 erm, I mean,\u00a0borrowing<\/em> aid.<\/p>\n According to the The Jerusalem Post<\/a>, the $320 million pier had apparently been fixed and ready for action last Saturday after breaking apart under moderate seas and partially sinking in late May. However, it only managed to say open for a single day before that darned water stopped cooperating\u00a0again<\/em>.<\/p>\n \u201cThe pier was reattached to the coastline Friday after a mishap in which heavy seas cost at least $22 million in damage to the structure. More than a million pounds of aid flowed over it Saturday, but operations were curtailed again Sunday and Monday because of more heavy sea conditions,\u201d The Washington Post<\/a> reported, citing military sources.<\/p>\n In addition, the World Food Program announced on Sunday that they were suspending aid operations because of rampant looting.<\/p>\n \u201cWe are reassessing the safety aspects of where we should be and what this means for us,\u201d said World Food Program head Cindy McCain<\/a>. \u201cIt made things a lot more dangerous. \u2026 The crowd is already hungry. They\u2019re desperate. And then to have something like this occur?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201c[WFP trucks] are looted because it\u2019s so difficult to get along,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n Hamas has a long history of, shall we say, requisitioning aid provided to the benighted residents of Gaza and decided who needs it most (hint: usually themselves<\/a>), but that didn\u2019t stop President Biden from promising to build the pier during his State of the Union<\/a> address in March.<\/p>\n \u201cThe United States has been leading international efforts to get more humanitarian assistance into Gaza,\u201d he said. \u201cTonight,\u00a0I\u2019m directing the U.S. military\u00a0to lead an emergency mission to establish a temporary pier in the Mediterranean on the Gaza coast that can receive large ships\u00a0carrying\u00a0food, water, medicine\u00a0and\u00a0temporary shelters.<\/p>\n \u201cNo U.S. boots will be on the ground. This temporary pier would enable a massive increase in the amount of humanitarian assistance getting into Gaza every day.\u201d<\/p>\n Biden says \u201cno U.S. boots will be on the ground\u201d for Gaza aid pier at his State of the Union speech pic.twitter.com\/ySoQZUaLjk<\/a><\/p>\n \u2014 Military Times (@MilitaryTimes) March 8, 2024<\/a><\/p>\n\n Sources say the military was not appraised of the plan before it was announced during the State of the Union<\/a>. Which, you know, also presents problems.<\/p>\n The pier has run way over budget \u2014 up to $320 million, according to Fox News<\/a> \u2014 and has \u201ccaused several issues since USAID commenced deliveries,\u201d the outlet reported last month.<\/p>\n Deputy Pentagon press secretary Sabrina Singh blamed<\/a> some of the trouble on \u201cheavy sea states,\u201d which caused the temporary pier \u201cto break free from their anchors due to a loss in power and subsequently beach ashore.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI think unfortunately, we had a perfect storm of high seas states, and then, as I mentioned, this North African weather system also came in at the same time, creating not an optimal environment to operate this JLOTS\u2013 this temporary pier.\u201d<\/p>\n However, as National Review\u2019s<\/a> Jim Geraghty noted in a May 29 piece, \u201cit did not require a \u2018perfect storm\u2019 to break apart the pier,\u201d noting that CNN reported the pier is only designed to withstand three-foot waves and 15 mile-per-hour winds.<\/p>\n \u201cThree-foot waves appear regularly on the Gaza coastline,\u201d he wrote. \u201cNow, the Pentagon\u2019s JLOTS guys aren\u2019t stupid. They knew the likelihood that weather conditions would require operations to halt at least temporarily, and the potential risk to equipment and personnel. This is why you\u2019re\u00a0seeing speculation\u00a0that the Pentagon prioritized the president\u2019s orders over a reasonable assessment of the risk.<\/p>\n \u201cWe don\u2019t know who, precisely, came up with the idea to build a pier. Perhaps on some future date, we\u2019ll hear that it was the proposal of national-security adviser Jake Sullivan or Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin or someone else. The buck stops with the president, anyway; he\u2019s the one who authorized the mission.<\/p>\n \u201cBut . . . come on. The plan was to build a pier on the front door of a war zone, in the absolute minimally acceptable environmental conditions, and hope for the best? That has Joe Biden\u2019s fingerprints all over it.\u201d<\/p>\n And the results? Pallets of food, unused, sitting in warehouses. The risk of those pallets being pilfered by Hamas if they ever managed to make it to Gaza. Problems coordinating between the various governments involved in the effort to build the pier \u2014 the U.S., Israel and Cyprus, along with conflicts involving the U.S. Agency for International Development. Oh, and that darned weather.<\/p>\n \u201cWe know the weather, and we know the rhythm of the waves and the wind at any time of year, and we could have told it was not going to work,\u201d said Miki Peleg, general manager of the Cypriot cargo-ship operator contracted by the government to remove the damaged pier<\/a> with their tugboat.<\/p>\n As it turns out, the administration didn\u2019t even need God\u2019s sense of humor to disabuse them of this fiasco. They just needed common sense. Sadly, neither that nor the Lord are generally given much heed at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.<\/a> these days.<\/p>\n This article appeared originally on The Western Journal<\/a>.<\/p>\n The post Biden\u2019s Failure: US Taxpayers to Spend Another $22M to Repair Gaza Pier \u2013 Report<\/a> appeared first on The Gateway Pundit<\/a>.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The good news: Thanks to God\u2019s underrated sense of irony, President Joe Biden\u2019s administration\u2019s ludicrous plan to build<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-30781","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n