Originally Posted by kel

I am not sure what you are trying to point out. How does rm provide an intermediate phase between total deletion and being marked for deletion + moved to a separate place in the directory tree?

I personally use a script that moves thing to a faux recycling bin in my home directory and use clearcase to protect the rest. For some funny reason I have never had an accident with rm :-P Maybe it's because I actually have time to think about what I'm doing after I hit enter before unlinking the contents of a directory.
No system is foolproof, but rm is asking for (and giving) thousands of people trouble which should hint to the problem.