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ODESSA, Fla. - A Florida Marine stationed in Iraq found out through Skype that he will be receiving a $25,000 surprise wedding at Old McMicky's Farm in Odessa.

Kayla and Giovanni Perez, will receive the rustic, farmhouse style wedding as part of Mission I Do -- where a local military couple is awarded a dream wedding on the lakefront property.

OldMcMicky's FARM (OMF) announced their6thMission I Do wedding giveaway in March. The Farm received 75 entries from local deserving military couples and narrowed the entries down to eight worthy couples. On April first, voting was made public.

Nicole Kennedy & Jacob Woods won the contest.

The Perez's were one of the top finalists, but did not receive the most votes, but after hearing their story Old McMicky's Farm decided to award a second couple.

Kayla and Giovanni have been together five years, they had their first child in 2012, and soon after got married at the courthouse. Following that, the couple would have two other children.

Last Valentine's Day, the Perez's lost their four-month-old son, Zaiden, unexpectedlyto SIDS.

The couple who has always dreamed of a "real" wedding -- entered the online contest through Mission I do, never thinking they would win.

The first wedding for Kennedy and Woods will be October 22 followed by the second-surprise wedding give away of the Perez's on December 3rd.

The couples will have their wedding on the lakefront property and will be given a wedding planner, caterer, photographer, wedding rings, flowers and more.

"These wedding gifts are in appreciation of the service and sacrifice of those who have currently served or have served in our military," said Ralph Zuckerman,

Old McMicky's has donated over $125,000 to active military members and US Veterans as part of Mission I Do.

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Florida Marine stationed in Iraq gets $25K wedding surprise from Old McMicky's Farm - ABC Action News

The corpses had been tossed on both sides of a virtually deserted side road leaving the village of Hamam Alil, 15 miles south of Mosul. Shriveled and discolored by the summer sun, they barely registered a glance from drivers rumbling past.

But all seven corpses had three things in common: Their hands had been tied behind their backs; they had been blindfolded; and, though they were decomposed, one could still make out the rictus of pain imprinted on their faces.

The gruesome remains were among at least 26 blindfolded and handcuffed bodies found in government-held areas in and around Mosul, Human Rights Watch said in a report last week, in what it concluded were extrajudicial killings probably carried out by government forces since the start of the operation to retake the city from Islamic State in October.

As Iraqi forces, backed by a U.S.-led coalition, have advanced into Mosuls neighborhoods, tens of thousands of desperate residents have fled the bloodshed. Once they reach government-controlled areas, those flagged for ties to Islamic State are held, often without charge, where they undergo further investigation before being presumably sent to trial or transferred to Baghdad.

In an earlier report, HRW said the Iraqi Interior Ministry was holding, without charge, at least 1,269 Islamic State prisoners in filthy, overcrowded prisons. Some were boys as young as 13.

But some, like the corpses found on the road, never got that far.

Saed, a baby-faced tribal fighter manning a nearby checkpoint, remembered the night almost a month before when he and his fellow tribesman, Rayyan, had heard shots.

We didnt know what it was, and we radioed in to ask but got no response, he said in an interview. He gave only his first name for reasons of security.

In the morning we found the bodies, he said.

It had been the second such incident in the area. A month earlier, four corpses, also bound and blindfolded, were found in a field a short distance from the road, said Talal Aqoub, the tribal leader in the nearby village of Boweyr.

We dont know who did it, said Aqoub, adding that several villages along the same stretch of road had also become dumping grounds for bodies. All the men who were killed had unkempt beards, the sort of ones you would see on the Dawaesh, he said, using a nickname for Islamic State fighters.

Belkis Wille, Human Rights Watchs Iraq researcher, said in a phone interview that several government agencies known to be screening and detaining people with Islamic State links are operating in the area.

We have raised incidents like this with Baghdad, and they have said that, with such a huge amount of forces involved, surely there will be individual fighters who make mistakes, but that this was not policy, Wille said.

But its not just state-affiliated groups that would take matters into their own hands.

Relatives of Islamic State members are often subject to tribal law. People who were harmed by the group exact thaer (a vendetta) against the militants family or tribe.

In the village of Kharaar, a few miles from where the corpses were found, several houses lie empty after having been scorched and then barricaded.

No one is coming back to these houses, because theyre for people who were Daesh, said Mohammad Hayess Sultan, the villages mukhtar, or leader. If they returned, there would be problems.

Either way, with an active conflict zone only a few miles away, its unlikely the government would spare any resources for an investigation.

Will [authorities] investigate specific incidents? said Wille. Weve seen nothing to suggest they have a commitment to do that.

The rights group had also received reports that a unit with the Popular Mobilization Forces, paramilitary units known as the Hashd al Shaabi, had executed 25 men and dumped their bodies in the Tigris River.

The bodies of bound and blindfolded men are being found one after the other in and around Mosul and in the Tigris River, raising serious concerns about extrajudicial killings by government forces, said Lama Fakih, deputy Middle East director for Human Rights Watch.

The lack of any apparent government action to investigate these deaths undermines the governments statements on protecting detainee rights, she added.

The Human Rights Watch report comes after photographs emerged in the news media last month documenting mass torture believed to have been perpetrated by Iraqi forces. Detainees suffered the use of electric shock, choking with plastic bags and beatings, sometimes lethal.

Even in death, the abuse continues: Corpses of those suspected of Islamic State links are routinely treated with disrespect.

In the days after the bodies near Hamam Alil were discovered, We couldnt sleep outside from the smell, said Saed, the tribal fighter. But when we asked if we could bury the bodies, we were told not to interfere and that they should be left there.

The public display of the bodies was meant to serve as a warning to others, said Wille.

During the Mosul offensive, corpses of slain Islamic State jihadists are often left to rot in the street, becoming the object of macabre selfies or desecrated by packs of dogs.

The abuses, said Nussaibah Younis, an Iraq expert at the London-based think tank Chatham House, risk making the reintegration of those living under Islamic State rule even more difficult once the jihadist group is defeated.

Ultimately were going to face an ongoing ISIS insurgency even after the liberation of Iraqs towns and cities and it will try to recruit disaffected Sunnis, said Younis in a phone interview last week, using an acronym for Islamic State. She also noted that the government had to win the hearts and minds of the people in the area.

Life has been so difficult for them under ISIS that this wont be a challenge, she said so long as the army and Iraqi militias dont commit atrocities that alienate them.

She added that the vast majority of Iraqs security forces have behaved professionally, but the actions of a few would give everybody a bad name and undermine the sacrifices they have made.

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Corpses being dumped in Iraq show signs of torture, execution and Iraqi forces may be responsible - Los Angeles Times

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Chaldean Christians in Sterling Heights have bee fighting a mega-mosque proposed for a residential area where they live for more than a year. Now, up to 200 of their family members are set to be deported by the Trump admistration.

More than 100 Iraqi Christians were rounded up Sunday evening in federal raids in Michigan and will soon be deported back to their native land, where they face an uncertain fate in a country where Christians are marked for death in a genocide being carried out by ISIS and other Islamic groups.

The raids were conducted by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE. The ICE agents showed up without warning at the homes of Chaldean Christians and at a popular restaurant called Ishtars in Sterling Heights, Michigan.

Those detained were mostly legal residents of the U.S., some having spent the majority of their lives here, but have had felonies on their records.

Nahren Anweya, who emigrated to the U.S. with her family as a young girl and is now in her early 30s, said up to 200 were rounded up Sunday, most of the Chaldean or Assyrian Christians.

Video taken of the raids showed distraught families screaming and weeping.

So, as you can see from video the family members were very confused, they didnt know what is going on, and their families were beside themselves, she told WND.

Watch video of the raids Sunday in Michigan:

One man, Wisam, whose family is afraid to give his full name, is 49 and has been living in the U.S. legally since age 11. He served less than a year in prison for an assault conviction when he got into a fight at a bar when in his early 20s. He punched a man who was harassing his girlfriend.

Wisam has lived here in Sterling Heights almost his entire life and had actually gotten into a brawl in a bar there were four men who were verbally harassing his girlfriend, explained Anweya, a spokeswoman for the Chaldean community in Michigan. Because he struck first, he was the one charged. He served his time, and hes been a hard-working, productive member of society ever since, but he never applied for citizenship, that was his mistake, and he was one of the people who was picked up yesterday.

Anweya said ICE will not let Wisam speak with his family.

Like many Iraqi Christians, Nahren Anweyas family fled Iraq in 1989 after being decimated by the Muslim community there. More came after the fall of Saddam Hussein made life even more difficult for Christians.

They have attorneys filing motions to release him but the DHS is not going to respond to a motion, she said. We hope that they do, but this is heart wrenching, a devastating situation.

Chaldean Nation, a group that represents the Chaldean diaspora, tweeted Monday:

On Facebook, the organization posted a video and stated:

In addition to facing a racist Sterling Heights Mayor Mike Taylor that wants to build a mega mosque, the persecuted Iraqi Christians are now facing heartless federal authorities that are forcing them to go back to Iraq to destroyed Chaldean towns and villages. Obama allowed Islamic cowards to destroy Iraq and Trump is finishing the job. HEARTLESS politicians that have no sense of reality.

The Washington Examiner reported Monday that Trump is allowing 120,000 Dreamers to stay in U.S. despite their illegal status, keeping in place the controversial Obama-era DACA program.

Nathan Kalasho

Nathan Kalasho, president of a Madison Heights-based Chaldean-centered charter school, said many of the Chaldeans like Wisam targeted for deportation back to Iraq are so Americanized they dont even speak Arabic. He said the 100-plus people rounded up so far range in age from their mid-20s to 70. One woman is fighting cancer.

Some people have been here for 40-plus years. A 40-plus year old was detained yesterday and has been here since he was 2 years old, he said.

He said a majority of Michigans Chaldean community voted for Donald Trump in last years presidential election, thinking he would protect them and their family members left behind in the Middle East.

In a June 2015 interview with CBN News correspondent David Brody, candidate Trump boasted I will be the greatest representative of the Christians theyve had in a long time.

He told Brody he was outraged that so many Christians were stuck in Syria and Iraq even though they want to come to the United States.

For that reason, Kalasho said many of the Chaldean Catholics in Michigan voted for Trump, even though Pope Francis was against Trump.

After the Iraq war a lot of this community were completely disengaged from politics or at least disenfranchised by the Republican Party, Kalasho said, citing the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, who protected the Christian community in Iraq. When Hussein was removed by former President George W. Bush, hells fury was unleashed on Christians their priests were abducted, their churches burned down, and many of their members run out of their homes, were beheaded or shot if they didnt convert to Islam.

But they started to show their support for Trump when he took a very hardline approach against ISIS and the situation in Iraq, Kalasho said. A lot of them, just speaking to them today, they feel let down and upset. I see it as a betrayal.

WND reached out Monday to ICE press spokesman Khaalid Walls, who responded that the raids resulted from a deal made by President Trump and the government of Iraq, which agreed to take back its foreign nationals slated for deportation in return for being removed from Trumps second travel ban.

Walls stated in full:

As a result of recent negotiations between the U.S. and Iraq, Iraq has recently agreed to accept a number of Iraqi nationals subject to orders of removal. As part of ICEs efforts to process the backlog of these individuals, the agency recently arrested a number of Iraqi nationals, all of whom had criminal convictions for crimes including homicide, rape, aggravated assault, kidnapping, burglary, drug trafficking, robbery, sex assault, weapons violations and other offenses. Each of these individuals received full and fair immigration proceedings, after which a federal immigration judge found them ineligible for any form of relief under U.S. law and ordered them removed. More information about this enforcement effort will be made available in the coming days. The vast majority of those taken into custody are detained at the Northeast Ohio Correctional Center in Youngstown, Ohio.

Advocates in Michigan said the vast majority of those rounded up were not murderers or rapists but convicted of petty crimes years ago.

The Chaldean and Assyrian Christians are concentrated in Sterling Heights, Warren, Madison Heights and other cities along the Oakland-Macomb county line of southeastern Michigan.

Kalasho said dropping an Americanized Chaldean Christian into Baghdad is like putting a house-trained cat that has lived its entire life indoors out into the middle of the woods.

What makes this so puzzling and frustrating is both the last administration and the current one have said these are people who are victims of genocide, but then they turn around and say that although they are victims of genocide they are perfectly able to survive if they get dropped off at an airport in Baghdad, Kalisho said. I dont want to speculate on anything but there are not many Christians currently in Baghdad, and many of these individuals being deported dont know a lick of Arabic, many proudly expose the cross, many have tattoos of the cross or other Christian symbols, which will make them a clear target for someone who is a radicalized Muslim.

Anweya was even more blunt about the fate of these Christians upon arrival in Iraq.

These are people who would not fair very well in Iraq, she said. As soon as they find out they have some kind of connection to the United States, they will kidnap them, demand cash from their families, threaten to behead them, some in the end will die.

Were literally deporting them into a lake of fire.

Anweya, whose family escaped Iraq when she was a small girl, said kidnapping Christians has become big business in Iraq.

The moment they know its a Christian they kidnap them, and they contact the family and say you have 30 or 50 days to pay up otherwise your family member will be beheaded, she said. Our people sided with the U.S., so they consider us as traitors, they have been calling us traitors for decades, and they always call us traitors because we side with the West. So they will be in grave danger. Some of them dont even have any family there so they wouldnt know where to start. We can only hope someone in a high position will see this and step in.

Anweya said she does not believe the order to detain and deport Chaldean Christians came specifically from Trump.

President Trump is deporting illegal immigrants with criminal backgrounds. These are not illegal immigrants, she said. They are mostly refugees on green cards.

None of them had ever committed murder, none of them had ever raped anyone, but when ICE showed up they had a crime on their record. They didnt give them any information, they were picked up from their homes or from a restaurant and told they just wanted to ask you a few questions.'

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US sending Christians back to Iraq to face 'slaughter' - WND.com

Will the defeat of Islamic State in Iraq be a foreign policy victory for Donald Trump? With the fall of Mosul imminent, what happens next?

There will be winners, like the Kurds. There will be losers, like Iraqs Sunni minority. There will be gains for Iran, which backs the Shiite militias drafted to fight Sunni-dominated IS. And there may be a silver lining for the Trump administration - specifically in the form of Kurdish independence and permanent American bases in a Shiite-ruled Iraq. But any declaration of victory on the part of the United States depends on how the measure of those results is taken.

Start with the Kurds. Their military forces currently control a swath of northern territory, including the oil-rich province of Kirkuk. The area has been a functional confederacy since soon after the American invasion of 2003 and in spite of likely opposition from Baghdad, a fully-realized nation-state of Kurdistan seems inevitable. The Kurds certainly think so; theyll hold an independence referendum on September 25.

Previous U.S. administrations restrained Kurdish ambitions, trying to keep Iraq more or less as it was within its 2003 borders. George W. Bush, and to a lesser extent Barack Obama, wished for a unified Iraq as a symbol, the conclusion of the invasion narrative of eliminating Saddam Hussein and establishing a new semi-secular ally in the heart of the Middle East. A unified Iraq that enveloped the Kurds was also sought by NATO ally Turkey, which feared an independent Kurdish state on its disputed eastern border.

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The Trump White House appears less anguished about Kurdish independence; Trump is for the first time, for example, overtlyarmingpro-Kurdish independence militias, whom the Turks call terrorists, to take on Islamic State. Washington doesnt seem to have a plan for disarming the militias before they start fighting for control of disputed ancestral Kurdish lands held by Turkey.

So the key question has become not if the Kurds will announce some sort of statehood, but whether the Kurds will go to war with Turkey to round out their territorial claims in the process. The United States, with the ties that previously bound Washington and Ankara weakened following Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's authoritarian crackdown, might just be ready to stand aside and allow Kurdish ambitions to play out. The Kurds are respected in American conservative circles important to Trump, and the Turks have fewer friends than ever there. Kurdish oil will be welcome to Washington, and the Kurds have always championed close security ties with the U.S. A strong U.S.-Kurd alliance will also help Trump keep Iran in check.

Meanwhile, an Obama-era marriage of practicality which brought Shiite militias into the fight against Islamic State will not play out as well for Trump.

Any reluctance on the part of the United States to act as a restraining force on the Iraqi central government's empowering of Shiite militias disappeared in 2014. As the Iraqi National Army collapsed in front of Islamic State, the crisis demanded battle-ready forces, and the militias were the only option available outside of Kurdish-controlled areas.

The problem for America is that many of those Shiite militias owe significant allegiance toIran, whichhelpsarm them and supplements their efforts withspecial forcesand leadership. Unlike the post-invasion years of about 2006 forward, when the United States and Iran fought a shadow war for control inside Iraq, America has had to accept that it needs the militias to defeat Islamic State.

Time will tell what Iran will do with its influence in Iraq. But there is certainly nothing for the White House to celebrate seeing Iranian boots on the same ground where Americans died to hold territory. Or with having to deal with a Baghdad government beholden to Tehran and its Shiite militias.

In the Sunni parts of Iraq, there is no real win for the Trump administration. The fight against Islamic State is destroying Mosul, and has already devastated Sunni cities like Ramada and Fallujah. Neither Washington nor Baghdad has any realistic plans to rebuild.

Yet despite a tangential win alongside the Kurds, and with clear losses vis-vis the Shiite and Sunnis, there is perhaps a real silver lining in Iraq for Trump. Permanent American military bases.

Post-Islamic State, Iraq will be a Shiite nation with close ties to Iran. The price Iraq and Iran will be forced to pay for Americas reluctant pragmatism over this will likely be small but permanent American military bases inside Iraq, mostly out of sight in the far west. (You wont laugh if you remember that the U.S. maintained its base at Guantanamo even after it severed ties with Soviet-dominated Cuba.)

Trump is unlikely to give up bases in a rush to declare victory in Iraq, as did his predecessors, and has several thousand American troops already in place to back up his plans. America seeks bases as a symbol of some sort of victory, a way to block any politically-ugly Shiite reprisals against the Sunnis, and as a bulwark against whatever happens in Syria. In addition, Israel is likely to near-demand the United States garrison western Iraq as a buffer against expanding Iranian power.

Sealing the deal is that Iran will have little to gain from a fight over some desert estate that it would probably lose anyway, when their prize is the rest of Iraq. Those bases even might, at America's expense, keep any Sunni successors to Islamic State from moving into Iraq - as happened after al Qaeda outstayed its welcome.

While the fight against Islamic State in Iraq isnt over, an ending of sorts is clear enough to allow for some reasonable predictions. But whatever happens will leave an unanswered, and sadly, perhaps unasked, question: was the outcome worth to Americans the cost of some 4,500 dead, and trillions of taxpayer dollars spent, over the last 14 years?

The Pentagon lost track of equipment worth more than a billion dollars, according to a now declassified Department of Defense audit obtained by Amnesty International last month. The F-35 program has already cost $100 billion to develop, and may not even be ready for combat according to an ex-director. The Justice Department has charged at least 20 U.S. Navy flag officers in the Fat Leonard scandal one of the biggest corruption scandals in American military history.

The chancellor of Germany no longer trusts the United States or the United Kingdom. In a May 28 campaign speech in Bavaria, Angela Merkel signaled distance from the two Anglo Saxon states, telling her audience we Europeans must really take our destiny into our own hands.

Continue reading here:
Commentary: Trump's silver lining in Iraq - Reuters

SALT LAKE CITY The aromas upon entering Iman Alshrahebs Salt Lake Valley apartment, a world away from where she grew up, deliver a message Iraqi food travels well.

Middle Eastern dishes have a special way of tickling the taste buds. For members of the Alshraheb family, they also help savor memories of their southern Iraqi home in better times. Food is an important cultural lifeline for refugees, who have left almost everything behind to forge new lives in an unfamiliar land.

Recently, Iman, 56, stirred a skillet of onions, peppers, mushrooms, shrimp and spices as she talked with her daughter, Baidaa, 28, about their hometown of Basra and their more recent home as refugees in Jordan. The dish, a stew called magbus rabyan in their native Arabic tongue, is a mainstay in their household.

Iraqi recipes draw from a long history dating back to ancient Mesopotamia and they are influenced by Turkish, Persian and Syrian cultures.

Iman dreams of cooking again for her mother and brother, who remain in Iraq.

I want to see my family again, she said while preparing saffron rice that is traditionally served with the stew. I dont want to lose anyone.

Basra sits along the Shatt-Al-Arab waterway, which runs into the Persian Gulf, 65 miles away. Seafood is a staple of the denizens of the ancient city and surrounding area, Baidaa explained.

Here in Utah, her father, Abdul Rahman Alshraheb, 62, fishes the Jordan River regularly, keeping the refrigerator stocked with carp all summer.

In Iraq, Abdul Rahman owned and operated a car-parts store. The family had a large house surrounded by big, leafy trees in a pleasant neighborhood. On Sundays, the extended family would gather at Baidaas grandmothers house to drink tea in small, glass cups and catch up before a bountiful midafternoon meal.

Before the war, life was good in the city of 1.5 million. There was music and dance, and the family had a wide circle of friends that included writers and poets, Abdul Rahman recalled.

In addition to Baidaa, Iman and Abdul Rahman have three sons. In 1998, the youngest, Asad, then 18 months old, became extremely ill. At the hospital, Iman saw many babies who seemed to be dying. A doctor told her the best treatment for the youngster was in neighboring Jordan.

The family moved to Amman, believing they would return to Basra once Asad was well. That didnt happen. On March 20, 2003, the United States and its allies invaded the country that had been led for decades by strongman Saddam Hussein.

Although southern Iraq now is safer than Baghdad and parts north, violence mostly from car bombs remains unpredictable.

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Savoring memories from Iraq, family finds safety in Utah - Daily Herald