Press Misinformation - Individual Ready Reserve

The AP, Reuters, and others ran with an inaccurate story about "recall" of certain individuals into active military service. In fact, as Blackfive reports:

The military is not calling back discharged and retired individual soldiers. They are dipping into the Individual Ready Reserve. There is a big difference between calling up IRR soldiers and recalling retired or discharged soldiers.



When you sign a contract to enlist or get a commission, it is generally for EIGHT years. You perform four years of Active duty, then you have four left in the Reserves or National Guard.

Sgt. Stryker comments on this misleading story here.

The AP story has since been amended to include a reference to the IRR, but unless you read that far, the first paragraphs of the story will still lead you to believe that the military is forcing individuals who have completed their service obligations to return, which is completely untrue.



A simple Google search yields this information:

What is the Individual Ready Reserve (IRR)?



Individual Ready Reserve (IRR), a manpower pool in the Ready Reserve, primarily consists of: Individuals who have had training, have served previously in the Active component or the Selected Reserve, and have some period of a military obligation remaining. IRR members are in an active status, but do not perform regularly scheduled training.

[Emphasis added by me.]



For some reason, this type of hasty reporting always works against the war effort. I can't imagine why this might be the case.