(Ken Silva, Headline USA) The $320 million pier built by the U.S. military to bring humanitarian aid to Gaza will be reinstalled Wednesday to be used for several days, but then the plan is to pull it out permanently, the Associated Press reported Tuesday.
The officials said the goal is to clear whatever aid has piled up in Cyprus and on the floating dock offshore and get it to the secure area on the beach in Gaza. Once that has been done, the Army will dismantle the pier and depart. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because final details are still being worked out.
The Gaza pier is one of the larger boondoggles in Joe Biden’s scandal-plagued administration.
The Biden administration’s pier in Gaza has been a debacle!
At a cost of $320 MILLION, we can only use it to deliver 7,000 metric tons of food. This means EACH POUND costs American taxpayers $20,730 dollars!
Remember that the next time you think your grocery bills are too… pic.twitter.com/6DRDCBOD0H
— Rep. Matt Gaetz (@RepMattGaetz) June 5, 2024
Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., who monitored the Gaza pier project from its beginning, did some number crunching last month on the house floor.
“At a cost of $320 MILLION, we can only use it to deliver 7,000 metric tons of food. This means EACH POUND costs American taxpayers $20,730 dollars! Remember that the next time you think your grocery bills are too high under Joe Biden,” he said on Twitter last month.
While Gaetz’s point still stands, he may have misspoke when he said only 7,000 tons of food can be delivered over three months. Pentagon officials have claimed that more than 19.4 million pounds of food has gotten into Gaza via the pier.
If there’s any silver lining to the failed pier project, it’s that U.S. troops will no longer be in harm’s way once it’s gone for good. The project has been hampered by persistent heavy seas and stalled deliveries due to ongoing security threats as Israeli troops continue their offensive against Hamas in Gaza.
The Pentagon had previously warned that the pier could lead to the U.S. military being directly involved in the Israel-Hamas conflict. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin admitted as much during a congressional budget hearing last month, when Gaetz expressed concerns that the 1,000 US troops operating just off the coast of Gaza are prime targets for Hamas.
“Don’t you think that’s boots on the ground? President Biden told the country we weren’t going to have boots on the ground in Gaza,” Gaetz said. “You guys seem to be sort of saying that boots on a pier connected to the ground connected to servicemembers shooting into Gaza doesn’t count as boots on the ground.”
A staging area for the pier had recently come under mortar fire at the time of Gaetz’s remarks.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Ken Silva is a staff writer at Headline USA. Follow him at twitter.com/jd_cashless.
