
Yes, Mr. President, we will control their airspace, and paralyze them, until they accept partition, as we did with Crimea. No, Mr. President, we are professionals and there is no chance of error or detection. We have trained to fight Americans, this will be a piece of cake.
And then a few weeks later, some somber-looking, sorry bastard walks in and says: Sir, we have a problem.
The briefing begins, and the bad news rolls.
It was our stuff. Our missile. Our goons. Commanded by our officers. Yes, we’ve been caught on camera. Yes, there was some clumsiness on social media. No, we have not allowed anyone near the crash site, but we can’t hold it off forever. The men involved are in hiding. Except Strelkov, who has said the plane was full of dead bodies. (He freelanced that one, sir.)
How far does this go, Mr. President? Well, sir — and here the aide might shuffle some papers uncomfortably to avoid noting that the orders came from the very top — we can deny it all, but sooner or later the trail leads back through military intelligence to special channels in the military, to special channels here in the President’s office, to…well, you know…