Hi Walter!
I think one important issue we've left out previously is whether or not this runs on a network.
In fact, on a network, you might be right with your statement, but only in rare scenarios that involve extremely large amounts of data (a huge number of short records for instance). In this case, just getting the bitmap across the wire may take forever (well, a couple of seconds that is... ;) ).
In general I wouldn't say the Delete() index is humbug. I think most programmers do the right thing if they add that index. If there is a problem, this can always be re-evaluated. But I'm still very confident that in most scenarios this index is a good idea.
Markus