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Pop culture has lied to you about the Pentagon.
The nerve center of the U.S. military, the movies would have you believe, is a teeming hive of warplanning, a citadel on the Potomac where polished brass plan wars and calculate in dimly lit rooms how to deter attacks. Ask anyone who works here, though, and you'll learn that the Pentagon is so much less than that. Sure, the work of national defense actually gets done here. But it's actually a giant mall.
No, really. You can buy any kind of random tchotchke here, from novelty Army-themed shot glasses to an Xbox 360. You can get your hair did and your nails buffed. And you can get all the empty calories you want: with over 20,000 people working in 6.5 million square feet of office, the food courts are as numerous as they are fat-filled. No one in Dr. Strangelove ever munched on a Whopper. But in the real Pentagon, nothing goes with the nuclear codes like a greasy burger.
