Exclusive: US military's pier in Gaza to cost $320 million
Exclusive: US military's pier in Gaza to cost $320 million
The U.S. military's cost estimate to build a pier off Gaza to deliver humanitarian aid has risen to $320 million, a U.S. defense official and a source familiar with the matter told Reuters.
The figure, which has not been previously reported, illustrates the massive scale of a construction effort that the Pentagon has said involves about 1,000 U.S. service members, mostly from the Army and Navy.
Still, the cost has roughly doubled from initial estimates earlier this year, according to a person familiar with the matter.
"The cost has not just risen. It has exploded," Senator Roger Wicker, the top Republican on the Democratic-led Senate Armed Services Committee, told Reuters, when asked about the costs.
I've got a great cost-saving idea!
Withhold all aid from Israel until they start allowing serious amounts of humanitarian aid into Gaza!
Boom! 320 million saved, AND a far greater amount of aid reaches Palestinians! Win-win!
Yeah. I wish there was the support available for that.
That pier was built to directly aid Gaza. Are you saying it shouldn't have been built?
Why in the everloving fuck do alternative methods end-running Israel to get food, water and medicine to civilians in Gaza need to be built? There are airports and docks that can be used right next to the zone, and Israel controls the roads.
If they acted like anything except a tin-pot dictatorship, this would be completely unnecessary. But here we are. The sooner the ICC swears out a warrant for the nazis in charge, the better. Then maybe we can get some human beings in charge that know how to run a functioning democracy.
The pier was built to lessen the political effects of letting Israel bar the literal convoys of aid out of the country they are committing genocide in.
It's a 320 million USD version of thoughts and prayers.
Republicans are all for sending weapons at any cost, but line itemize humanitarian aid. Fucking monsters. Maybe they should just pay it out of Israel’s $26B aid package.
Why singling out Republicans? Dems voted to fund Israel and Biden signed the bill. Republicans aren't in charge right now so not sure what you're on about.
They're referring to the comments from Senator Roger Wicker in the article.
You know what would have cost $0?
NOT GIVING ANY MONEY TO ISRAEL!
That's anti-semetic! - Benjamin Netanyahu
Honestly, it doesn’t sound all that expensive. But they need to hurry up, or they won’t be anyone left to feed.
That doesn't seem to include the cost of mobilizing 10 US Naval Vessels, the cost of the aid distributed itself, or the cost of the servicemen's salaries.
That said, I don't really a give a fuck, you know? Like, why would we care? We need to do it, we're going to do it no matter the cost.
No we don't. There is 0 reason to build a humanitarian relief pier in Gaza. Most of Gaza's border is our "close ally" in this conflict. The other border is willing to aid to pass through their territory. Both countries are advanced, and have more than enough logistical infastructure to facilitate all the aid transfers that are nessasary.
The land corridor is more than capable of facilitating aid deliveries. The pier is a PR stunt to make it look like we are working on the problem.
Israel has been making military targets of aid distribution through land routes. If that were an effective method then there wouldn't be hundreds of thousands if not millions of starving Palestinians, and then we wouldn't need to send the naval vessels.
Your comment reeks of ignorance of the state of the world.
Ah, I was actually wondering if this was because oh we have a naval fleet guarding it, thats millions a day right there.
Well, the use of several of these vessels for supplying aid has been common for decades, so it's not like it's a new expense, either.
I love how the US is simultaneously supplying weapons to Israel while dropping food and building piers for the country Israel is bombing. Wait until Israel bombs the pier.
Someone is getting rich AF off this.
Makes sense, military hammers cost half a million each.
I guess if I had to pay taxes to get some sort of aid, any aid inside Gaza or to subsidize an oil leech's record profits, I'd be fine funding 10 such piers.
Eh, chalk it up as a training exercise. Rapid construction of docks is something that might need to happen in an amphibious assault. We had to do it for D-Day.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mulberry_harbour
In the autumn of 1942, the Chief of Combined Operations Vice-Admiral Lord Louis Mountbatten, outlined the requirement for piers at least one mile (1.6 km) long at which a continuous stream of supplies could be handled, including a pier head capable of handling 2,000-ton ships.
Maybe try to figure out how to do it more-cost-effectively based on this.
And I wouldn't be surprised if people in the Levant will be using it for a long time to come, so someone will get good out of it.
Haliburton wins again
It's not for aid, it's so they can export the newly extracted natural gas from the now razed Gaza