: Kidnapping children, instantly traumatizing their parents, then killing off
: the dazed clones who didn't even know what the fuck was going on. All of
: this to subjugate some oppressed colonies who had every right to take up
: arms against Earth.

Give me a minute while I imagine myself in Halsey's labcoat. I am in the following position:

-By using the Carver model*, I have determined that all-out war between Earth and her Colonies is inevitable. I have determined that the war is going to be deadly, with perhaps three quarters of the human population perishing.

-I know how bad the carnage can get without looking at the model. The UNSC has already shown itself willing to nuke an entire colony, and extremist factions in the Insurrection have detonated a nuke in a Haven arcology. Warships mount cannons with apocalyptic yields should they be targeted at a planet's surface, and some of these have fallen to the Insurrection.

-The UNSC is the epitome of bureaucratic inertia. There's just too much time, money, and effort sunk into the outer colonies. If I popularize the Carver findings to try and stave off total war, the data will be argued against or ignored.

-If I have any doubts about the above, all I have to do is buy a history book and look up stuff like "The War on Terror", "The War on Poverty", "The War on Drugs", and any other loosing war that Big Government has gotten itself into over the past six hundred years.

-I can probably avert the greatest amount of bloodshed by starting a program to let the UNSC assassinate the leaders of the Insurrection before they can instigate an all-out war. I just need to hold off the war long enough for technology and communications to let the colonies have better representation in the democratic process. Better yet, the colonies might win their independence without bloodshed. If I play my cards well, I can also prevent the program from being abused.

-Assassinating a URF leader who is hidden in a compound on a colony that is friendly to him is a superhuman feat. Literally. We're going to need supermen with extraordinarily good armor.

I view Halsey in the same way that I view Robert Oppenheimer. Not only did Oppenheimer's work save millions of lives directly by obviating the need to invade Japan, it probably saved hundreds of millions more by making World War III unfightable. Of course, the analogy breaks down in that Oppenheimer didn't do anything as morally wrong as kidnapping children and turning them into child soldiers.

*I wouldn't be the least bit surprised to learn that the Assembly screwed with the Carver model to make the predictions more dire. Hard to steer humanity if it's been split back up into nation states.

: How lucky of the UNSC to have to contend with
: genocidal morons the year the Twos became active to justify their evil.

I, for one, would love to know if the Spartan II program could have prevented the war that the Carver Findings predicted.