@Louis:
Yes, but when they made the deal Kuma was presumably still working against them, I don't think making him stronger was necessarily the biggest factor in their decision to get him on their side. Using Kuma as the template for the Pacifista has a bunch of benefits: it gets rid of an enemy of the WG, it makes the pacifista's much more intimidating by using someone powerful, and it lets them do the work without having to experiment on their own people (not that they wouldn't, just that it's better for them in they don't have too). Vegapunk was doing a lot more than just changing one person into a robot, he was designing a whole bunch of them based off of that one, even if they are weaker it's still a huge achievement.
Nowhere is it implied they knew Kuma was working for the revolutionaries. If they did, they'd definitely question his motives a lot more. This was all just a deal between him and Vegapunk anyway, and I don't think the WG probably had all that much say in it, but wouldn't complain. The control of all of them will probably be transferred to Dragon at some point as Vegapunk's part of the deal, or something.
The pacifistas were being built just fine before Kuma had his brain replaced. It wasn't necessary for that.
@MonsterEnvy:
pre time skip I think Croc is stronger he may be weaker post time skip though Crocodile may have gotten stronger as well.
The main things for me is that Croc never really tried in his fights with Luffy.
1st fight let Luffy hit him for a few minutes then one shoted him. (Luffy only Lived because Robin was around to save him)
2nd fight after seeing that Luffy was capable of hitting him and getting annoyed with him he felt like trying and sucked luffy dry. (Luffy only survived because of some water he had shot in the air came back down and rehydrated him out of pure luck)
Luffy was not able to beat Croc in his first two fights and was weaker, nobody denies that. He got lucky to come out alive both times. Doesn't really matter at all.
3rd fight Crocodile never used any of his power's and he still drawed with Luffy as Luffy was dying from Poison while Crocodile was knocked out if Robin had not had some antidote on her Luffy would have died while Croc would have lived.
While it's true that Croc should have had revenge in his loss, he still lost. The chapter in which he lost was called "surpassing the opponent" which HEAVILY implies that he was… you know... surpassed. As in he was weaker before and stronger after. Oda's words, not mine. And this was even before Luffy learned the gears, which make a massive difference.
none of these fights are really good judges of Croc's full power.
You're saying he held back in a fight he lost? Lol… he even said it was the first time he was going to be serious at the beginning, which is why he brought out the poison hook in the first place. I see a lot of Crocodile's fans make this argument, but the only reasoning they can pull out is "he didn't use all his powers." As if he'd just fight at a quarter power while he was getting knocked around, or something. It doesn't make much sense.
at the war of the best Crocodile had no problems keeping up with any of the big names like Mihawk, Doflamingo, Jozu and Akainu. (hell he did better against Mihawk then Jinbei did and better against Akainu then anyone other then Whitebeard did.)
Jozu kicked his ass in their exchange, and Croc was clearly outclassed. Against Dofla he was surviving due to his logia intangibility more than anything else (head cut off) since Dofla wasn't taking advantage of his weakness for whatever reason, maybe he didn't know it. But Croc never landed an attack either, and he didn't exactly have an excuse for that.
We never saw either Mihawk or Akainu attack him. A case can't even be made about Akainu because Akainu never even had the chance. By the time he was focused on attacking he was also facing all the division commanders at the same time. Croc managed to get a sneak attack in from behind which only annoyed Akainu due to logia intangibility. This is not impressive.
Jinbe never fought Mihawk, as that was anime filler. Croc intercepted one of Mihawk's attacks, but we have no idea what happened after that. Croc could have survived on logia intangibility, or he could have been cut up, we really don't know. What we do know is that Mihawk emerged without a scratch, so Croc was unable to touch him either.
he just showed he was on a high level at the war of the best and was one of the best.
He never did anything impressive besides survive attacks. This makes him at least as strong as Buggy.
hell his low shichibounty could have been his starting one for all we know and he was invited just after getting it like Boa was.
Yeah, though in SBS volume 36 Oda says that if he hadn't been one his bounty would be at least double, and Luffy only rose to 100 million for beating him so it probably wouldn't have been all that much higher.