Chapter Forty-Two War Powers Supplemental Act

Sitting in the Situation Room is President Egan, Vice-President Devonshire, Chief-of-Staff Sterling, Secretary-of-Defense Anderson, CIA Director McDonald, NSA Director Walker, Admiral Smith, Generals Bradley and Sanford.

“Ladies and Gentlemen, this meeting is going to have just one item on its agenda. There will be time for discussion. After the discussion, I will make my statement,” said the President.

“Having received substantiated intelligence on a regular basis, it appears that the nation of Iran is threatening to attack both the United States and the State of Israel. When it might happen, I cannot say at this point. However, the information received to date indicates that sometime in the near future we are going to have a confrontation with them.

“As President, it is my responsibility under the constitution to protect our people and our country to the best of my ability. Because of the serious nature of this intelligence, I have met privately with our admiral and generals sitting here this morning. We have discussed both preemptive confrontation and retaliatory confrontation.

“As the four of us see it, this country has a major problem if its shores are attacked on a larger scale than September 11th. If we are restricted to the constitution’s regulation of who is the acting president, in the case of the death or inability of the president to function as commander-in-chief, we could become crippled by our inability to make tactical military decisions to save our nation.