[Thud]

Timely effective intervention in Liberia would have consisted of 150,000 - 200,000 US troops and additional medical personnel during the first week of September. Getting such a large force there by that effective date would have required at least seven weeks of time in transport, i.e, they'd have had to gotten their orders in June and started in full motion by the middle of July. Liberia's transportation infrastructure is that bad. You can't get fire hose quantities of water through a straw.

So the political decision to send them must have been made in June.

[EternalHope]

Thanks for the info. I wasn’t aware the Liberian transportation system was so bad.

The rainy season is about to start, which means mosquitoes and malaria. There are already too many dead to properly dispose of. At some point the water supply will become contaminated. Dysentery and cholera will follow.

In other words, Liberia faces the perfect storm. There may not be much of Liberia left by next spring. Liberia has about 4 million people.

I assume Sierra Leone is in the same position, just not quite as far along. Guinea might be also.

The combined population of these three nations is a bit over 20 million. Given current international policies it is hard to imagine how it will be contained to just those three countries.