It might well be that the reason nobody was watching the Military radar that night is because nobody was assigned to watch the scope, the operator(s) may have been on standby in case they were needed. I will add another voice to a couple of previous posts - many people have an exaggerated view of military capabilities / readiness. This was on a sleepy Malaysian night shift in peacetime conditions, not West Germany at the height of the cold war or on any cocaine smuggling route. There may be valid reasons to criticize the Malaysian government but this is not one of them.
Another point I would like to mention is that the reason that the ACARS was turned off and the aircraft "soared" to a higher altitude appears to some of us (it has been alluded to here but I may be the first to come out and state it bluntly) as if the man at the controls wanted to prevent data transmission of the fact that that the cabin pressure had been vented to ambient outside air pressure. The increased altitude appears to have been to insure the least amount of resistance for the shortest time from the people in the back of the plane.