U.S. Military imported sand to build Iraq "blast walls"

When it comes to military needs no expense is spared. Iraqi sand was not good enough so no doubt some private contractors made big bucks at U.S. taxpayer expense shipping boatloads of sand from Qatar and the UAE. Each wall cost $3,500 each. The geniuses who plan all these things are now considering whether they should ship them to Afghanistan at a cost of $15.000 each. Maybe they could import sand from the Gobi dessert and build them in Afghanistan if the Afghan sand is no good. Alternatively they could break up the walls into small pieces and market them as souvenirs on eBay. This is from antiwar.com

For all the sand Iraq did have, from the point of view of the U.S. military it didn't have the perfect type for making the miles of protective "blast walls" that became a common feature of the post-invasion landscape. So, according to Stephen Farrell of the New York Times, U.S. taxpayer dollars floated in boatloads of foreign sand from the United Arab Emirates and Qatar to create those 15-ton blast walls at $3,500 a pop. U.S. planners are now evidently wondering whether to ship some of the leftover walls thousands of miles by staggeringly roundabout routes to Afghanistan at a transportation cost of $15,000 each.