I keep flipping between she's being indecisive and doing this...thing...that I've seen this one friend of mine do, where she's basically made her decision already and manipulates or is just checking that everyone is behind her so that she's not fully responsible. The thing with Critical Mass is that I got the sense that she was heading in that direction already and was looking for backup.

lierdumoa's pointed out that she's trying to utterly divorce Atlantis from the military control of the SGC, and yet she has never had any experience with battle/war/military. So to make up for this hole in her knowledge she has John, who she can influence/control/whathaveyou, and Ronon who she totally befuddles and who is indebted to her for a home/place-to-fight-from.

Worth pondering though, is how, as you've said, this makes her less decisive in the end. I wonder/hope that TPTB might take this and run with it so we can maybe see the implications of this outside of battle situations.