Elayne's reaction is what people have been nagging all the other good guys, of the Two Rivers variety, to arrive whenever they gave orders that led to people dying. Lan's sole act of little-bitchiness in the series was that same guilt, and it was a great enough character flaw to relegate him to a peripheral role in the events surrounding Tarmon Gaidon, when on paper, he should be an excellent candidate for Dragon Reborn or associate ta'veren.

Elayne did nothing wrong and thus has nothing to feel guilty about. She did have to be rescued, but she was attacked by surprise with overwhelming force, and you have not the slightest shred of proof that your amateur whining for recon would have done one bit of good. In fact, the sister are extraordinarily confident and would have been far more likely to slaughter any "recon" who got close to them between Chesmal's weaves and the weapon ter'angreal. What kind of a leader has her people wander around being PMDs for balefire and AoL rayguns? This is not some video game, where the recon units are cheap and expendable or are else fast moving and invisible. "Recon" has no guarantees of finding anything, and by its very nature, finding out IF something is somewhere is highly imprecise due to the logical impossibility of proving a negative. You only think they needed to search more because you have a cheat method of knowing there was something to find. At SOME point, people just have to take risks. Tell me how many Kinswomen you think would have been a fair trade to save Sareitha's life? Because the longer Elayne sat around waiting for her "recon" to find anything, the more Kinswomen Careanne would have been killing off to further Shiane's scheme, and her cell would get that much closer to carrying it off.