1y ago

US could take 2 months and 1,000 troops to construct floating pier to deliver aid to Gaza, officials say | CNN Politics

edition.cnn.com US could take 2 months and 1,000 troops to construct floating pier to deliver aid to Gaza, officials say | CNN Politics

A floating pier and causeway that will be used to deliver critical humanitarian aid by sea to Gaza is expected to take at least one month or possibly as long as two for the US military to build and become fully operational, Pentagon Press Secretary Major General Patrick Ryder said on Friday.

28 comments

Yeah that’s too long unfortunately. Hunger and lack of medical care are going to kill so many that maybe it was part of the plan all along to make it easier to deny
- Food really isn't something one needs that quickly unless you've got no fat on your body. I remember reading a paper about an obese guy who (voluntarily) fasted under care of a doctor for over a year. Took vitamins, but other than that, just water.
  Water, on the other hand, is really important. No water, you're dead inside a week, maybe a little longer.
  
  But these people are not obese. They're already starving to death.
  Nutrition screenings conducted at shelters and health centres in the north found that 15.6 per cent – or 1 in 6 children under 2 years of age – are acutely malnourished. Of these, almost 3 per cent suffer from severe wasting, the most life-threatening form of malnutrition, which puts young children at highest risk of medical complications and death unless they receive urgent treatment.
  https://www.who.int/news/item/19-02-2024-children-s-lives-threatened-by-rising-malnutrition-in-the-gaza-strip
  And that's from nearly three weeks ago.
  
  You mean the water Israel has controlled, destroyed and extorted since they started the occupation in 1967? They've also irreparably contaminated ground water, bombed water infrastructure, and shut off the pipes from access to the water they take from Gaza.
  
  Gazans are already chronically malnourished, though, not obese. And some parts of Gaza have been under occupation for months. Babies are already dying and soon children, then adults will follow.
- Why don't you fly to Tel Aviv, buy some food, and take a taxi to the border to walk into Gaza hand out food yourself?
  
  Oh god crucify me for pointing out that 2 months when they’ve already been starving might be too long. Innocents don’t deserve to die, sorry for having bare minimum empathy
  
  You're telling me that taking 2 months to build a pier as one of the largest and wealthiest armies in the world is reasonable?
  
  Got no $
  
  Not a bad idea this is what the IDF should be doing.

This was a bad idea along with the airdrops. All because Biden is unwilling to pressure Netanyahu publicly or set any red lines. So now he’s trying to scramble to give aid to one and bombs to another rather than do the simpler move of reigning one side in and allowing them to send in aid. International law says that Israel is required to allow this aid in or help, and they are doing neither.
- Yeah this seems crazy. We should just require Israel to set forth and protect a humanitarian corridor. We have a ton of leverage against Israel.
- Because they are Muslim and brown. The US doesn't have a stellar reputation of being kind to brown people. So no wonder we are quicker providing bombs for Israel then we are on giving aid to Gaza.
  If not voting Biden didn't give us Trump (who be 1000% worse) then I would do anything I could to make sure Biden loses in November. But nope I live here and have to hold my nose and vote Biden even though he a terrible human and fucking bad president.

Didn't take 2 months and 1000 troops to sell weapons to Netanyahu.
- Probably less

That's still pretty quick if it's capable of supporting large trucks and long enough to allow cargo ships to dock next to it. It's probably a week or so to get the materials to construct it on site.
- Can’t they like put the cargo on smaller boats and take it to shore?
  
  Well for one Israel won't let Americans put boots on the ground so that's makes it very difficult already.
  But even if they could, their best option would be to get an amphibious assault ship in the area and use that to transfer small trucks but that would probably tske just as long or longer to tranfer to the area and even working as fast as possible 24/7 they would really struggle to get a decent amount of aid into gaza and would probably be less than they could airdrop.
  
  https://www.navy.mil/Resources/Fact-Files/Display-FactFiles/Article/2171588/landing-craft-mechanized-and-utility-lcmlcu/
  
  They could, it just slows delivery for every transfer.

Could those 1000 troops not just use the Rafah crossing to bring things directly in? Israel would be fucking daft to fire on US troops distributing aid.
- Daddy Netanyahu told Biden no

Too bad we’re not at war with them or it could get done in 48 hours.

2 months seems like a reasonable timeline for a large infrastructure project halfway across the earth from the us. ofc its a horrible situation and they could save a lot more lives if they could just truck aid in.
- They can just truck aid in, but they won't because Biden either is spineless or he just doesn't care about the babies dying of hunger.

2 months? There HAS to be a better and faster way to build this. Seriously, just interlinking floating pre-made shit. It's like Lego.

28 comments