It would be really cool to hear what you think of using CBC mode for FDE, though.
http://sockpuppet.org/blog/2014/04/30/you-dont-want-xts/
But, apropos this thread: the specific claim Wikipedia makes about the insecurity of CBC mode for FDE was debunked by Phil Rogaway, who --- much as I like Justin Troutman --- trumps Justin Troutman. :)
I'm largely in agreement with you, and I enjoyed your article on XTS. My general thought towards Elephant's contribution to CBC is that it forced coarse-grained manipulation, which is probably a lot more likely to crash a system as opposed to allowing meaningful attacks.
To risk a new design like Elephant implies that they found the attack model worth consideration; we know the rationale for including it, but we don't know the rationale for removing it. Perhaps knowing this would tell us something useful about current perceptions on disk encryption.
Lastly, I echo your disdain for sector-level encryption.
i may have to do some wikipedia editing later today ;-)