Actually, my friend, I don’t condone the murder of innocents to create a causus belli.
However, that being said, consider yourself as planner with the responsibility for safeguarding every man, woman and child in the US from an enemy who had shown themselves to be able, implacable and dangerous. They had already attempted to sneak nukes into Cuba once. I wouldn’t be inclined to trust them and would also have to worry about Cuba’s danger in terms of biowar, electronic and human intelligence work and so forth.
Given that the entire cold war standoff was based on the acceptance of the need to be willing to slaughter whole populations, it is not impossible to see that the sacrifice of a small number of innocents might seem worthwhile if it increased the security of hundreds of millions more.
I’m off to bed now (time difference), but I’m happy to continue in the morning if you have any further questions.
I would brief the office of the President with the expectation that he would engage the Senate for an authorization to go to war based on the evidence of the imminent threat.