User blog comment:Ironreaper/Did Shepard leave Ceberus./@comment-204.210.207.90-20100915194803/@comment-1900300-20100916060823

First, there are 7 people (Shepard, Jacob Taylor, Kai Leng, Joker, Chakwaz, Kenny and Gab) who left the Alliance to join Cerberus. 7 members in an organisation of 150+ are not a great deal. Any more is speculation, albeit highly likely speculation as disillusioned Alliance personal would be easy to recruit. But many more members could have been exposed to Cerberus philosophy first. The Codex itself states that Cerberus is an embarrassment to the Alliance and Miranda states that hating Cerberus is a "typical Alliance attitude." Plus why not join Cerberus after the Alliance abandons you for killing a krogan or saving the Council from batarian nutjobs or, my favourite, dying? Cerberus gives you cool weapons, heaps of money and top-of-the-line equipment As for the Illusive Man. Did he commit crimes to the huge extent of the Collectors? No. But his hands are not clean. He has had politicians assassinated to ensure more controllable people are in power. He arranged for ezo espouser across many settlements to promote biotic growth in humans, resulting in countless children dying from it. He had an Alliance team killed by Thresher Maws and had a survivor experimented on to see if the venom could be used as a bioweapon. He had Kahoku’s team killed to cover his tracks and had Kahoku killed for asking to many questions. He had a number of biotic children treated as lab rats and horribly murdered (which took place before the base went rouge. You don’t send starving kids in steel boxes to a scientific facility on a deserted planet to give them cookies). And the colony transformed into husks in ME still comes to mind. Miranda said the husks where already dead, but since information on another cell can only come for the Illusive Man himself, then that is suspect. His manipulation of Aira proves he is no stranger to shifting fact to suit him. Those are just what we knows about. A handsome, charming, eloquent monster is still a monster.