IPhoto made a huge mess, how to clean up files on HD???

I have thousands of photos in iPhoto v6.0.6, and it has somehow made a huge frustrating mess of things. Some preliminary information:
• My preference is set to "Copy photos to iPhoto Library folder when adding to library."
• Under the main "Library" heading, I have five categories with the little yellow calendar icon: "Early Photos," "2007," "2008," "2009," "2010." I am under the impression that when adding/removing photos to an album, I am simply creating/removing links to the photos within these main categories. Therefore, I was assuming that if I delete the photos from these categories, they will disappear for good within the main Libraries as well as within individual Albums.
Earlier this evening I attempted to delete a bunch of photos which I don't want anymore... I want to get rid of these photos in iPhoto, but I would like to delete them from the hard drive as well. I went into each of the 5 categories under the main Library heading, and selected hundreds of photos to delete. After highlighting the photos I wanted to delete, I pressed Command-Delete on my keyboard (which, in the Photo menu, says it should move the photos to the trash). I assumed this meant it would move the physical files to the Finder's Trash. After deleting photos from the individual categories, I went into my Finder's Trash, and there was nothing there. So I noticed there is also a "Trash" section at the bottom of the left-hand pane within iPhoto (very confusing). All of my deleted photos were in there. So I selected them again, and pressed Command-Delete. All photos disappeared without a trace within iPhoto.
So far, so good.... My HUGE problem is that none of these photos were actually deleted from the hard drive!! I went into my home folder/Pictures/iPhoto Library/etc/etc/Camera Roll #x, and ALL of the photos I attempted to delete still reside on my hard drive as if they're still being managed by iPhoto!
I'll be honest... I have plenty of time to manually go through dozens of folders in the Finder and look for all of these photos a second time and delete them. However I'm simply not willing to waste time doing that when I thought I had already accomplished that task by selected "Move To Trash" from within iPhoto, and then emptying the trash. I'll just ditch iPhoto altogether if I can't fix this.
My questions: a) How can I get iPhoto to actually delete a photo when I tell it to (including thumbnails)? b) How can I clean up my hard drive automatically so that the only photos within the iPhoto Library folder (in the Finder) are those which still reside within iPhoto? c) How do I prevent this mess from happening again? d) If anyone from Apple is monitoring this forum, when will this major flaw in the user experience be fixed?

1 - it is a really good idea to post in the appropriate forum - you apparently posted an iPhoto 6 question in the iPhoto '09 forum - in this case the answer is the same for the questions you ask
a) How can I get iPhoto to actually delete a photo when I tell it to (including thumbnails)?
Select the photo(s) in roll view and drag to the iPhoto trash or press the delete key - empty the iPhoto trash from the iPhoto menu ==> empty trash - do this in batches of 100 or less photos
b) How can I clean up my hard drive automatically so that the only photos within the iPhoto Library folder (in the Finder) are those which still reside within iPhoto?
I'm not sure what happened and no longer have iPhoto 6 to test - one thing to try is backing up your library and rebuilding the library (depress the option and command keys and launch iPhoto)
c) How do I prevent this mess from happening again?
Delete as above in answer to a)
d) If anyone from Apple is monitoring this forum, when will this major flaw in the user experience be fixed?
SInce this is strictly a user to user forum and Apple specifically does not monitor nor answer here do not expect an answer from Apple
Also NEVER use the finder to make any changes to the contents or structure of the iPhoto library - doing so may corrupt your library and cause data loss
LN

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