Board Thread:Speculation House/@comment-14138255-20160807005311/@comment-208.54.36.184-20160812174659

67.140.223.66 wrote: How do you explain the Atlas soliders still helping people, though? And Cinder's little speech beforehand. Even if the rest of the world doesn't believe him, the heads over at the Atlas military likely figured out their army was hacked. Also, his ships weren't attacking people. How would they explain the fact that half of them are sitting wrecked in Vale? Shouldn't that be a clue there was more at hand You've got a point about the ships. But that doesn't save Ironwood in that case at all. Roman Torchwick was Ironwood's prisoner, but he still escaped, and even worse, hijacked the ship and shot down at least two others. Ironwood still does not come out of that looking good. The citizens and the higher-ups, possibly even Ironwood's own soldiers, will ask about his security; since he wasn't on the ship, his only honest answer is "I don't know", which is not a good answer.

As for Cinder's speech, let's see. Ozpin pointed out that Ironwood's highly visible military presence was making people paranoid (or more paranoid than they would be, given that they live in a world where countless mysterious shadow monsters are hellbent on killing them all, anyway), the reveal of Penny's true nature made Ironwood look untrustworthy (mass paranoia + untrustworthy leader = conspiracy theories abound), and IIRC, Cinder's speech also included a not-entirely-inaccurate-if-you-really-wanna-get-technical inplication/accusation that Ironwood came to Vale as some kind of conqueror. Combine that with my last parenthetical, all that you pointed to as evidence Ironwood can use to defend his innocense, doesn't really help him at all.

-He who is AWESOME