: [ ** The thing that bugs me with this logic train is that they are all wrong
: in my opinion. The Spartans weren't the reason that Humanity won. Humanity
: didn't even "win"! It was a TKO! The Covenant tore itself apart,
: essentially letting the UNSC win by default. The REAL threat in all this
: was the Flood. YES, the Master Chief obviously played a major part in
: stopping that threat(point for Halsey), but had the Flood not been a
: thing, and the Covenant not imploded, I have a very, very hard time
: believing that Humanity would have survived. The two outcomes would have
: been the Covenant successfully activating the Halo's and killing EVERYONE
: or the Covenant wiping out Humanity.]

I think you can argue that the ends justify the means, but as readers we're in a privileged position; we know that without Master Chief the entire universe would have likely fallen to the Flood (I can assume the Covenant would still have gone to Sigma Octanus and found Halo the same way even without the humans to chase around on the surface of the ringworld.) The Spartans' fabulous success in the games and books comes down to Laws of Plot and Story, where our hero and his allies surmount enormous odds. Humanity would have won, eventually, it's just at what price (again, not logically or on paper, but per the laws of story.)

None of these characters really know the score (although I did find it interesting even the Venezians had heard about the Flood attack on Earth though--wonder how much they really know.) It's in a way easier for them to have the perfectly rational moral distaste for Halsey's actions.

As for only Steffan being the one who brings up the network of people responsible for enabling Halsey (and profiting from her work), I don't really think that's true. It's brought up several times that Parangosky has a role, and how her actions might be her ice-queen way of asking for forgiveness. We really don't ultimately know if she has somehow bought into her own press releases about Halsey being the main bad, or if she's just playing the political game despite the crap she feels underneath.

I liked BB's origin reveal because it explains a lot about the character—his not quite motivated hatred for Halsey is in part subconcious self-loathing, which is an interesting shade to his superiority complex. The whole suicide note is basically another example of how it wasn't all Halsey—here's one of the guys who helped it happen.