On Tuesday, the White House officially announced that it would be sending US troops to Liberia to fight the Ebola outbreak. The military has already requested to use $500 million from its Overseas Contingency Operations budget to deal with Ebola in West Africa and ISIS in Iraq, and plans to request another $500 million to combat the epidemic, which United Nations officials have said is needed to keep the number of cases in the "tens of thousands." (So far, the World Health Organization is aware of about 5,000 people who it believes have been infected in Liberia, Guinea, and Sierra Leone, although it says the actual toll is probably much higher.) More MoJo coverage of the Ebola crisis. Why the World Health Organization Doesn't Have Enough Funds to Fight Ebola This Map Shows Why People Are Freaking Out About Ebola's Arrival in Senegal New Drugs and Vaccines Can't Stop This Ebola Outbreak 5 Diseases That Are Scarier Than Ebola We Are Making Ebola Outbreaks Worse by Cutting Down Forests But as the military heads to Liberia, concerns over the region's stability—and to what degree US troops will be involved in maintaining it—still hover over the entire operation. The core of the military's 3,000-troop mission in Liberia will be medical—building treatment centers and training medical staff by the hundreds to run them.