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non firing off a shot, as if to warn off unseen enemies who might try to threaten it.
• "My opinion, just as a recipient of the card, I think the photo speaks for itself," said Tom Myers, a fourth-generation resident, town cultural officer and student of Fort Lee's history, chuckling at the thought.
• Until a political scandal centering on New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie enveloped this town of 37,000, many people knew little more about Fort Lee then do the thousands of drivers whose cars speed -- or, too often, crawl -- across its landmark bridge each day. The town was just the blur of glass high-rises and brick Cape Cods on the other side of the guardrail.
• But to people who live in this New York City bedroom community defined by both a feisty pride and frustration over the mixed blessings of its chokepoint locale, the scandal is the reminder they did not need of how the bridge dictates the rhythm of everyday life -- and the lack of recognition the town gets for the challenges that poses.
• "We endure combat here every single day dealing with that bridge traffic," Sokolich said Thursday, when he stepped before television cameras to respond to allegations that Christie's top aides orchestrated a plan to clog the borough streets with traffic as a form of political payback. "So . to deal with it from a man-made standpoint, yes, it's very frustrating. It is."
• ___

• F.E. WARREN AIR FORCE BASE, Wyo. (AP) -- Moments before he launched a carefully planned pep talk to members of the Air Force's nuclear missile force, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel was undercut by yet another sign of trouble in their ranks: a drug probe of two missile officers.
• Hagel flew here Thursday to deliver a message he felt needed to be heard by men and women who sometimes tire of toiling in a job that can seem like military oblivion. He wanted to buck them up, while also insisting they live up to their own standards, which he said should never be compromised in a business as potentially dangerous as the launching of the world's deadliest weapons.
• "We depend on your professionalism," he declared to an assembly of members of the 90th Missile Wing, which operates 150 Minuteman 3 intercontinental ballistic missiles, one third of the entire ICBM force.
• What Hagel did not count on was the news -- disclosed just as he was preparing to deliver his words of praise and encouragement -- that two Minuteman 3 launch

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