Oscar opened his mouth. It was true; he was on the National Security Council, and there was a war in the works, and despite his tangential status and his deep disinterest in foreign affairs, he knew a great deal about the coming war. He knew that the President planned to send out a flotilla of clapped-out battleships across the Atlantic, without any air cover. He knew that the President was utterly determined to provoke his token war, whether the Congress could be talked into declaring one or not. He knew that in a world of precisely targeted cheap missiles and infinite numbers of disposable drone aircraft, the rust-bucket American fleet was a fleet of sitting ducks.