Could this spell the end for the "radical Colonels and Special Foirces officers" that Secretary Gates relies upon for such thinking??

Actually the irony of this approach is that it's such an inside the box approach to produce outside the box thinking.

The COG for driving inside the box thinking is the senior rater profile. Defeat that COG, and you can then start looking at how to then enable more flexible thinking. Leaving that COG in place and hoping to create flexible thinking is like Refusing to address and even protecting the illegitimacy of the Karzai government while attempting to conduct a population centric solution to the insurgency in Afghanistan.

We have to learn how to drop the pet rocks first. But I guess that is outside the box thinking at work.