Good post.
The Army was also kind of schizophrenic in its "every soldier a leader," rationale, because that very same argument should have/would have been the undoing of the warrant officer corps, but not long after the Army did away with advanced specialist rank, they made the warrant officer corps even more robust by adding the rank of CW5 and actually giving commissions to warrant officers once they pinned on CW2.
I was in the 2nd Battalion 503rd. at this time. We had a great medic, Jerry Levy a true hero was later killed trying to retrieve a wounded GI.