Walrus wrote:

"The counter argument to this revolves around risks and resources. Taking the "Stars" out of institutions reduces the perfomance of the institution.

The question, debated since WWII, and probably still debated for all I know in army circles, is whether the cost, in terms of unit performance, of removal of good junior leaders from "line" units for special forces, and the high level of logistics and other support required by these special units is justified by results."
Indeed, that is the historical counter-argument against elite units. The counter-counter argument would be that the elite units are not designed npot simply "better" in terms of performance but "different", to do things regular units cannot do well at all. That would be the case here in that, to paraphrase John Arquilla, it takes a network to defeat a network.

Left to their own devices, our hierarchical, Washington-based bureaucracies cannot react fast enough to keep pace with our decentralized adversaries.

"As for bureacratic oversight, there have been many previous examples of "rogue" programs of questionable legality and effectiveness, as a result of lack of bureaucratic oversight. The Iran-Contra affair comes to mind...."
Iran-Contra no more proves that legally established networks would be less amenable to Legislative oversight than Watergate would suggest that tape-recorders are bad. Hierarchies and networks are simply organizational structures that are excel at some tasks over others. Hierarchies have a lot of advantages but outmanuvering elusive networks isn't one of them.

Rob Thornton wrote:

"- without legislation there is no forcing mechanism."
Absolutely. Budget and decision authority has to go to those closer to the problem than the banks of the Potomac