As Saudi Arabia continued to face criticism from world leaders for not taking in enough refugees fleeing war in Syria, the news station TeleSUR discovered that the nation has more than 100,000 empty, air-conditioned tents that could be used to house refugees. The tents, used only a few days a year in the town of Mina for hajj pilgrims, remained unused, as the nation's leaders insisted they are doing all they can for refugees.More than half of the 380,000 refugees who have arrived on Europe's shores since January are Syrian refugees, the United Nations reported. Saudi Arabia and other neighboring Arab nations have been criticized for not being as willing as some European nations to take refugees.The campsite is approximately 2,150 miles from Syria and could house up to three million people. Saudi Arabia has taken some 500,000 refugees already, according to TeleSUR, though Saudi officials claimed that the number is closer to 2.5 million. Syrians do not enjoy refugee status in Saudi Arabia, however, so it is difficult to know the exact numbers.

Saudi Arabia Says It Has Taken In 2.5 Million Syrian Refugees, Amid Criticism Of Gulf States' Response To Syri... http://t.co/vyE1jXK7hm— Saudi Arabia News (@dlsaudiarabian) September 13, 2015 Saudi Arabia has continued to defend its stance on refugees, with authorities saying that they have done all they can to support refugee populations by taking in Syrians as citizens and allowing them residency in the country."(The kingdom) was keen to not deal with them as refugees or to put them in refugee camps," said one Saudi spokesperson Friday, Reuters reported, adding that they did so "to preserve their dignity and safety and gave them complete freedom of movement." The spokesperson also said that Saudi Arabia has already given $700 million in humanitarian aid to Syrians. Portable  and  Rentals for Events, Offices, Warehouses, and Industrial In South Carolina, North Carolina, and Georgia Portable AC or heat for a special events, climate control rental solutions for commercial, industrial, or emergency situations.

Portable Air Solutions is your full service partner for temporary heating and cooling needs in South Carolina, North Carolina, and Georgia. home ac units 5 tonWhether you need portable air conditioning or emergency climate control services, call us now for a free quote.average life expectancy of ac unit South Carolina Aiken Columbia Charleston Florence Greenville Hilton Head Myrtle Beach Orangeburg Rock Hill Spartanburghow big of a house will a 2 ton ac unit cool North Carolina Asheville Charlotte Fayetteville Lumberton Pinehurst Raleigh/Durham Wilmington Georgia Augusta Atlanta Savannah “Adam Ruffin of Portable Air Solutions has always provided us the right product for the job at hand.  Whether it be for a small install or extremely large project, Adam comes through with what we need. 

I have personally worked with Adam for 7 years now and he has always been consistent and dependable.  In event rental this is critical as our clients demand perfection and there are no excuses.  There is only one chance to get it perfect each and every event as there is zero margin for error in event rental.  We have to have vendors that come through every time we call on them.  Adam Ruffin and his team at Portable Air Solutions does just that.” -Adam VancePrices are either the average per night price per room or first night of stay. You can select to display the prices with or without our estimate of taxes & fees (which may not appear on provider's booking page but will be charged at hotel checkout). Before you complete your reservation, verify the total cost on the provider's site. Prices and availability are not guaranteed. We’re not the seller. At KAYAK we don’t set the prices, so it’s not possible for us to guarantee what other companies are selling. We compile tonnes of data for you

Our service lets you quickly and easily compare results from hundreds of travel sites at once. In this sense, KAYAK is a search engine and we can't guarantee prices we find. Why aren’t prices accurate 100% of the time? Prices on airline seats, hotel rooms and car rentals can change frequently. Several people may also be trying to buy the same travel option simultaneously. As a result, you may find, on occasion, that certain prices are no longer available. If you have more questions or if you have a bad price to report to us, please send us an and someone from our team will get back to you promptly. The amount the U.S. military spends annually on air conditioning in Iraq and Afghanistan: $20.2 billion, according to a former Pentagon official. That's more than NASA's budget. It's more than BP has paid so far for damage from the Gulf oil spill. It's what the G-8 has pledged to help foster new democracies in Egypt and Tunisia. "When you consider the cost to deliver the fuel to some of the most isolated places in the world — escorting, command and control, medevac support — when you throw all that infrastructure in, we're talking over $20 billion," Steven Anderson tells weekends on All Things Considered guest host Rachel Martin.

He's a retired brigadier general who served as chief logistician for Gen. David Petraeus in Iraq. He's now in the private sector, selling technologies branded as energy-efficient to the Defense Department. Now it's important to note that wrapped up in Anderson's $20 billion figure are all kind of other expenditures – for instance, the cost of building and maintaining roads in Afghanistan, securing those roads, managing the security operations for those roads. That all costs a lot of money and is part of the overall war effort in Afghanistan. The Pentagon rejects Anderson's estimate. Still his claims raise questions about how much the US footprint in Afghanistan really costs – especially something like air conditioning. Why Does It Cost So Much? To power an air conditioner at a remote outpost in landlocked Afghanistan, a gallon of fuel has to be shipped into Karachi, Pakistan, then driven 800 miles over 18 days to Afghanistan on roads that are sometimes little more than "improved goat trails," Anderson says.

"And you've got risks that are associated with moving the fuel almost every mile of the way." Anderson calculates that more than 1,000 troops have died in fuel convoys, which remain prime targets for attack. Freestanding tents equipped with air conditioners in 125-degree heat require a lot of fuel. By making those structures more efficient, Anderson says, the military could save lives and dollars. Still, his $20.2 billion figure raises stark questions about the ongoing war in Afghanistan. In the wake of President Obama's announcement this past week that 33,000 American troops will soon return home, how much money does the U.S. stand to save? The 33,000 troops who will return home by the end of next year match the numbers sent to Afghanistan in 2010, at a cost of about $30 billion. That comes out to about $1 million a soldier. But the savings of withdrawing those troops won't equal out, experts say. "What history has told us is that you don't see a proportional decrease in spending based on the number of troops when you draw them down," says Chris Hellman, a senior research analyst at the National Priorities Project.

"In Afghanistan that's going to be particularly true because it's a very difficult and austere environment in which to operate," he says. That means most war expenditures lie not in the troops themselves but in the infrastructure that supports them — infrastructure that in some cases will remain in place long after troops are gone. "We're building big bases," American University professor Gordon Adams says, describing the money invested as, in economic terms, "sunk" costs. "We're seeing this in Iraq. We're turning over to the Iraqis — mostly either for a small penny or for free — the infrastructure that we built in Iraq. But we won't see back any money from that infrastructure." Then there's the costly task of training Afghan security forces. The Obama administration has requested almost $13 billion to train and equip Afghan security forces in the next fiscal year. And more importantly, Hellman says, "[Afghan President Hamid] Karzai indicated a couple years back that [Afghanistan] wasn't going to be a position to support their own military forces 15, 20 years out.

I suspect we're going to be called on to pay a substantial part of that bill going forward." Criticism From The President's Own Party For critics of the president, the idea that the troop drawdown won't save much money is reason enough to suggest it should be bigger. One outspoken critic is Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV). He notes the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have cost hundreds of billions of dollars so far, and he argues a larger troop drawdown isn't a national security risk. "We have the greatest special ops in the world. We have more technology than any other country on Earth," Manchin says. "Do we actually need to have 70,000 troops on the ground?" "When you have this many people in a country that doesn't want you there — that has no economy, no infrastructure and a corrupt government — and you're trying to stabilize it and build them into a viable nation? I'm not sure we have enough time, and I definitely know we don't have enough money," Manchin says. But others argue war should be waged independent of cost.

"The realm of war and peace exists separately apart — and justifiably so — from the economic realm," says Lawrence Kaplan, a visiting professor at the U.S. Army War College. He contends that critics like Manchin are looking for "economic answers to a non-economic question." "And anyway, it's not the war that's broken Washington's piggy bank," he adds, noting that Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security account for far more spending than the $107 billion the Pentagon says it will spend in Afghanistan next year. "Remember, we're talking about 30,000 troops," he says "I don't think that hundred-billion-dollar price tag should be the determining one." But for Anderson, the retired brigadier general, economics does have a role to play in modern warfare. Anderson advocates for increased energy efficiency for military structures to cut down on the need for long, dangerous fuel-transport missions. A few months ago, he says he heard from a company commander in Afghanistan. "He literally has to stop his combat operations for two days every two weeks so he can go back and get his fuel.

And when he's gone, the enemy knows he's gone, and they go right back to where they were before. He has to start his counterinsurgency operations right back at square one." Anderson says experiments with spraying polyurethane foam insulation on tents in Iraq cut energy use by 92 percent and took 11,000 fuel trucks off the road. But he adds there's a lack of enthusiasm for a greener military among top commanders. "People look at it and say, 'It's not my lane. We don't need to tie the operational commanders' hands.' — things like this," he says. "A simple policy signed by the secretary of defense — a one- or two-page memo, saying we will no longer build anything other than energy-efficient structures in Iraq and Afghanistan — would have a profound impact." CLARIFICATION: The Pentagon disputes the calculation made by Anderson about air conditioning costs. Defense Department spokesman Dave Lapan says that in fiscal year 2010, the Pentagon spent approximately $15 billion on energy for all military operations around the world.