http://www.estripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=23063

In the sidebar, this articles points out:

How many IRR soldiers have already been mobilized? 541; of those, 324 are on active duty, and 217 are awaiting training.

So, clearly the mobilization that will take place next week is not the first of the IRRs who are being called. They've been saying that up to this point, all of the IRRs that have been mobilized have been volunteers. That's the part I take exception to, since I was sent a telegram in mid-April and certainly did not volunteer. At the end of the day, though, I doubt the slight difference in timeframe is going to mean much, except hopefully that I get to come home that much sooner.

A bunch of other sources have more info on today's announcement:

US Newswire has the official US Army release, which to my surprise has some figures on the number of involuntary callups that have already been made. That's the first I've seen of a military source admitting to that (although since getting my orders I've heard several HR Command officers deny that anybody had been involuntarily called). Here's the quote:

This is not the first time the IRR has been called. During the Gulf War, over 20,000 IRR Soldiers were mobilized and deployed. Since then, there have been several other voluntary and involuntary IRR Soldier call-ups, including 2,533 IRR Soldiers mobilized since Sep. 11, 2001 in the GWOT (226 of which were involuntary mobilizations).

So, at least somebody is admitting I exist... :)

San Diego Reports

Reuters - which claims Rumsfeld only authorized a maximum of 6500 troops to be called from the IRR. That seems to go against many rumors floating around about the IRR being completely called up, which I'm not sure I believe.