The Duluth News Tribune Reports (on 5/19/04):
The Army on Tuesday confirmed that it pulled the files of about 17,000 people in the Individual Ready Reserve, the nation’s pool of former soldiers. The Army has been screening them for critically needed specialists and has called about 100 of them since January.
Under the authorization from Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, the Army could call as many as 6,500 back on active duty involuntarily.
_ “Yes, we are screening them and, yes, we are calling some of them up,” an Army spokesman, Col. Joseph Curtin, told Knight Ridder.“We need certain specialties, including civil affairs, military police, some advanced medical specialists, such as orthopedic surgeons, psychological operations, military intelligence interrogators.”_
I guess we should add Engineers to that list, since a number of Engineer officers have also been involuntarily activated. The article goes on to specify the total size of the IRR force:
Curtin said the fact that 17,000 files were being screened"is not a reflection of how many will be called back." He said the Army has 118,732 people on the IRR rolls.