AKA, the DRAFT is back.....
http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/index.html"Involuntary mobilization" of troops to commence The Los Angeles Times reports that "the Army plans to announce this week an involuntary mobilization of thousands of troops from the Individual Ready Reserve, the latest signal that the service is struggling to bolster ranks stretched thin by the global war on terrorism. The move, which Army officials say is likely to involve notifying roughly 6,500 soldiers about a possible deployment, is meant to fill holes in active and reserve units preparing to go to Iraq and Afghanistan this fall and early next year."
"In most cases, the Pentagon created the holes when it took soldiers with critical skills in short supply — such as civil affairs, intelligence, vehicle maintenance and truck driving — out of their units and shifted them to military units needed for more urgent deployments since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Now the bill for this system of 'robbing Peter to pay Paul,' as one defense official put it, has come due. 'After a while, the units you've been borrowing from have got to be filled out,' said an Army official who had been briefed on the plans and would speak only on condition of anonymity."
"The Individual Ready Reserve, or IRR, is a pool of roughly 118,000 former soldiers who are not members of a specific reserve unit, yet who have unexpired obligations to complete their military service. In some cases, they are soldiers who received honorable discharges before their commitment was scheduled to end and are legally bound to fulfill their contract if the Pentagon requires their services. Several thousand of these soldiers are already serving in Iraq, the majority of whom are volunteers."
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