yeah...when you are someone like Kwan you get held to your own standard. Compared to everyone else she was fine, I suppose, but it was really sub-par by her standard.
However, she could have AVOIDED or at least MINIMIZED this situation by at least committing to a GP event or two. Even one could have made the difference. But what's done is done.
Unless, of course, she couldn't do one later on. However, I also think that if U.S. Nats had used the Cop system in 05 that could have been beneficial to her (or maybe not so much, like they did MAJOR propping of Cohen's scores in 06 even though she stumbled TWICE- but still deserved the overall win).
I think the whole issue about Michelle's back preventing her from doing laybacks is whether she could have avoided or minimized the situation. If I recall correctly, once MK opted out of SA and SC, she couldn't get later events. If the whole purpose of doing the GP is to get some idea of whether a specific spin was a level 2 or level 3 (level 4 didn't exist at that time), and you can't do the spin at that time, then doing the GP doesn't help any.
I also think, though, MK's failure to do the GP events had little, if anything, to do with her showing at Worlds -- Sasha also dropped out (she was injured) but she did do well in Moscow. I think that MK's biggest problem was her constant re-doing of her program.