Just returned from Colorado Springs, where I spent a couple of days with the good people at Air Force Space Command. Part of my itinerary included a gee-whiz tour of Cheyenne Mountain, where NORAD keeps its underground command center. This is the room you’ve seen portrayed in films, when generals track ballistic missiles approaching the United States and yell into red phones things like “Get me the president!” In real life, it’s smaller than you might expect–though it does have a few big-screen monitors, a bunch of computers, and guys in green jump suits. There are also eight clocks at the front of the room. Seven of them are formally labeled and they mark Greenwich Mean Time, EST, Moscow time, and so on. The one that isn’t permanently labeled has a piece of paper taped below it reading, simply, “BAGHDAD.”