: And truth's plans were already in place before Thel failed to save the ring.

: Tartarus never showed any respect for the Covenant religion - look at his
: treatment of sparky, a Forerunner construct, an oracle. Compare his
: demeanour with the Arbiter's.

: None of the Brutes that heard the exchanges between Johnson and Truth seemed
: in the least bit bothered that it takes a human hand to activate the most
: holy rings, and Truth's admittance that he was lying about humanity.

: These, apparently, deeply religious Brutes didn't give a fig about the tenets
: of their religion. Maybe Truth kept all the religious ones away from the
: seat of power. Maybe their value to him was in their LACK of religiosity
: or deep thought.

: Some Elites asked questions whilst the Banished just wanted to break the
: Covenant and had won Elites to their cause.

: Brutes don't respect the religion, they even pissed where they wanted to on
: the Ark. They just pissed on the holy works. OK, this doesn't happen until
: after Truth has made his big decision but does NOT speak to a strong
: religious zeal. Should we just see Truth as a VERY bad judge of character.

: In contrast, the Arbiter was still uncle-toming right up to the point where
: Tartarus tells him that Truth wants to exterminate his race. No awkward
: questions from the Arbiter.

There's no direct evidence Truth planned on the usurpation of the Elites until after the events of CE as a done deal. I think there's a case to be stated that it was the failure of Thel (the Elite he chose against others' judgement to be his point man for the Fleet of Particular Justice) that caused him to switch to his backup plan, but it's probably also fair to say it was coming regardless given enough time. The longer the war went on, the more precarious the Hierarch's position was.

I think you're drawing a bit too much from the Bungie games about the rank-and-file Brutes to describe all of them. There are a ton of much more pious Jiralhanae in the universe, from Maccabeus to Castor to Decimus.

And again, the Arbiter in H2 is given a small subset of the personality he exhibits in other books. The Cole Protocol evinces his doubts pretty clearly, though they are kept to himself.

: My first reaction was, "who he?" so I Googled. OK, Ghosts of Onyx
: and the fleet battles game. The never failed, oober warrrior got his clock
: cleaned by Atriox? The totally undermines Jar. Though it does big up
: Atriox and Atriox is an in-game character.

I don't think he got his clock cleaned—the ONI briefs included in Halo Wars make it clear that during the Human-Covenant War, Atriox was not making any big plays. He was performing small strikes and focusing on gathering materiel. It was only with the dissolution of the Covenant hegemony and acquisition of the Elite Shipmaster's assault carrier that he entered the "big leagues".