of course the Maine sank. The "Sinking of the Maine Lie" was the misattribution of the Sinking to Spain, used as an excuse to start the '98 war. There are two theories that I know of, one is accidental sinking used opportunistically, the other is deliberate sinking ordered directly or indirectly by some of the highly placed politicians you refer to. I agree that the war would have happened no matter what, Spain was the weakest European power at the time after a century of civil wars (three!) and military insurrections and hence the easiest target. The US attack was the nail on the coffin (we still speak of the "disaster of 98").

But enough RL history discussions prone to get us into a flame war. What I was referring to as an interesting Traveller plot was: the PCs enroll in an Imperial ship, or are offered a job to bring it somewhere. The ship has been designated by Imperial high-rank officers to be destroyed and attribute it to an attack by a pocket empire, against which war will subsequently be declared with the support of public opinion... plan A involves an explosive artifact which the PCs will find while in jump, Plan B a masked ship waiting for them at the destination coordinates... now, how will the (Imperial) PCs react when they realize the Imperial government has decided to blow them up?

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Carlos Alós-Ferrer
Chair of Microeconomics, University of Cologne
http://www.decisions.uni-koeln.de