A couple of things:

First, as much as I disdain the whole Jihad thing and prosperity with-out expansion and think that it should have been MechWarrior: Imperial Age (featuring outward expansion of the successor states and clans). But, in case you don't remember, the Jihad did not succeed. It was basically a reign of nuclear and biotech weapon terror, backed up by well-trained and/or fanatical units. Which is all you need to do what the Jihad did.

Secondly, the 'clan battle armor' unit has NOTHING to do with the Children of Kerensky. It is (conjecture) Kuritan power armor (just look at the d___ things), the name being a reference to the Sengoku Jidai, during which Japan was divided up into a multitude of warring clans. If shoe fits, wear it.

People aren't evil. But they often tend toward irrationality. Evil is an invented term to help our feeble minds differentiate between various acts and how we "should" feel towards them.

perhaps. I'm sure there are fanatical but not totally evil members. They have gotten some really bad press of late though, what with nukings and all. Still, comstar MAY have reformed without the wobbly bad apples.

The truth is that no organization or government in the IS or clan space is completely clean. Not the federated suns, not the dracs, not the free worlds league, not the clans, and certainly not the Caps. So its just a matter of scale, right?

Not entirely right. Currently the Targe is not in production. From the Rhi Chan-dossier:

The Targe was one of the first BattleMechs built primarily for use by the defense forces of the Republic of the Sphere, rolling off assembly lines on Northwind in the early 3080s. Developed by the Northwind Highlanders, whose surviving forces joined Devlin Stone's Republic en masse, the Targe is a fast, medium-weight design with good armor and a payload of lasers and missiles that is effective at all ranges.
RS0103-04A is one of only a few hundred Targes produced by Cosara Weaponries of Northwind before the assembly lines were closed down in favor of civilian products.

Thats if we can believe the fluff. According to some sources the Arbalest was created recently, however both the Kell Hound Arbalest and Bolt predate the foundation of the Republic. So thier is a conflict in our data there. So its not like we can completely trust the fluff.

Hmm. According to the James Odom-dossier the Arbalest first appeared on the battlefield during the Word of Blake Jihad. So its design and first production line by the Nova Cats as a second-line unit probably predates the outbreak of said Jihad. Danni Haag's dossier tells us that the Arbalest she received from Tormark was brand new, which means that the Arbalest still is in production.

Using five million people as the qualifier for "evil", that makes the United States, Great Britain, Japan...well, most of the world's civilizations, very evil indeed.

Killing 5 million innocent people for the sole purpose of discrediting a single man and his mercenary company to prevent him from getting a land hold that might if rumors centuries ago are true have a Star League library is pretty #### evil. What most of you seem to miss is the entire Organization's goals and objectives aren't misunderstood they are evil of the worst kind. They abused thier position and spread misery and death across the entire Inner Sphere for centuries. They pretended to be neutral while spending all thier time keeping the Inner Sphere at war for the sole purpose of destroying Humanity. Then when they finally suceed in knocking humanity back into the stone age they would gloriously begin a new age of Mankind ruling over it with thier perfect society. There is nothing good or noble in any of thier actions. Someone working on a new technology to improve humanity, they will kill him and destroy his work and if it requires them to wipe out an entire city or planet so be it. Hmm we have some intelligence and troop reports lets hand them over to the opposing side to increase the slaughter in this war. Need a reason for a Interdiction lets dress up our own troops like a Davion unit and murder a few hundred of our own personnel then blow up the Hpg. People of Earth complaining about our rulership create a terrorist incident killing thousands of people and follow it up with reeducation camps and brutal crackdowns on the population.

Let's not get into an argument on 'evil'. Who gives a ####?? There are people, and there are people. If some people dislike other people, they're 'evil'. What's evil to you might not be evil to me. Then again, it IS evil. So, before I start acting 'evilly', let's get back to plastic goodness :).

Pretty much. Any assignment of evil to something or someone inevitably paints it with a broad brush.

This is wrong. I believe it was developed by Clan Nova Cat, though I may be wrong. The Dossier from Kara's Scorchers begins with "Not as versatile as its predecessor, the Elemental Battle Armor..." meaning that it was obviously created by somebody already capable of producing elemental armor. Next time you declare something to have "NOTHING to do with" anything, please try to learn the actual background of your subject. Conjecture is a fancy word for a guess, and guesses are bad supporting details.

Also, the same dossier describes Kara Fletcher to be huge, even compared to other Elementals, so an IS designed battle armor would likely not even her. Another obvious example that the CBA was designed for the Clans' genetically engineered infantry.