LAKE WALES - The community of Lake Wales said farewell to the 140 members of its National Guard unit today before the company heads out at 7 a.m. Tuesday for a year's deployment in Iraq. ...more

June 16, 2008

Scrawled in black Sharpie, the messages of love and support adorn hundreds of white bags of Starbucks coffee in Bob Williams' Wesley Chapel warehouse. (See above item.) Filling a dozen gigantic bins, the mounds of donated bags of coffee, purchased by Starbucks customers as part of a donation effort by franchisees, are shipped to U.S. troops stationed overseas in Iraq and Afghanistan. ...more

June 11, 2008

Flags will fly at half-staff Sunday in honor of Marcus Mathes, the Army sergeant from Zephyrhills killed in Baghdad in April. ...more

June 5, 2008

The military is reviewing soldiers' complaints that their standard ammunition isn't powerful enough for the type of fighting required in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Army's highest-ranking officer said Thursday. ...more

May 30, 2008

IRAQ Killed: 4,082 Wounded: 30,112 Florida killed: 185 ...more

May 27, 2008

LARGO - War protesters are using combat boots to remember Florida's fallen soldiers this Memorial Day. ...more

May 25, 2008

To the readers and voters of Highlands County: There has been much attention from politicians and the good ole boys recently, regarding the 33 misplaced items within the sheriff's office. Well, my concern is for the 33 percent of our young veterans coming home, either dead or diseased from Iraq; the billions of dollars misspent, no sufficient armor, no safe drinking water, missing uranium, plutonium, weapons and computers. ...more

May 5, 2008

President Bush sent lawmakers a $70 billion request Friday to fund U.S. operations in Iraq and Afghanistan into next spring, which would give the next president breathing room to make their own war policy. ...more

May 3, 2008

A Marine sergeant who became a symbol of resilience as he strove to recover from a roadside bomb blast in Iraq that blanketed 97 percent of his body with burns has died, the Defense Department said. He was 22. ...more

May 3, 2008

We're guessing that next December, when we are choosing the most interesting stories of 2008, the Iraqi Air Force plane that landed near Venus will be right up there. On Wednesday afternoon, a Cessna with Iraq Air Force painted on its side, made an emergency landing on C.R. 731. For those of us responding to the tips, we envisioned a fighter jet sitting in the road, not a Cessna. As Thursday progressed, and facts revealed that the Cessnas are built for training planes for Iraq, it became a lot clearer. They are shipped from Florida, but the Venus landing caused a flap. ...more

February 21, 2008