Nekkid emperor: the iCal vs. Mail "thing"

Question

By now I feel like I'm crazy. Please tell me that I'm not the only person who can see there's some kind of emperor's new clothes thing going on wrt iCal's handing of invitations from Mail.
The memories are shrouded but I recall a time (before Tiger? Dunno, it's too murky) that when I opened Mail.app containing an invite from an Exchange user, a little .ics file appeared in the message, I'd click it, it'd open iCal, and I'd accept. It Just Worked. Let me put that out there again: It. Just. Worked.
Sometimes it's the "me card" thing, sometimes it's the "events turn into all text" thing, sometimes it's the "can't change events" thing. I've seen the suggestions here and at Macosxhints.com, the scripting suggestions, the open it in text edit and fix the raw file suggestions, and I feel like I'm going to burst. They boil down to the same problem: iCal doesn't Just Work with events someone sends us in email.
Surely these do not represent the way our beloved Apple intends us to use these two applications?
Am I missing something? Even on these forums I can't seem to find the message where someone says "this is a known issue." Am I searching poorly? How could they break something that seems like such a natural and then not issue a fix for it for over a year? Open. Click. Accept. Forget Until iCal Reminds Me. Or to put it another way:
Open. Click. Accept. Trust.
That's it. Isn't that what you need? What we all sort of expect? That's not what it's doing now and I'm not alone.
To paraphrase Will Farrell's Mugatu: The bug has only one look for Christ's sake! .ICS Attachment? Me Card? Accept Invites? They're the same bug! Doesn't anybody notice this? I feel like I'm taking crazy pills!
Quicksilver G4   Mac OS X (10.4.8)   Home: 12" PB G4, eMac

Answer 1

No, no, I got it. I don't mean I can't find the date on which to drop it. I know the app will file it in the correct place.
I mean I don't know what date it's going to when I let it go, and if that date appears outside whatever view setting I'm using to look at my calendar, that is when I have to go play hide & seek.
I mean, seriously, wouldn't it make more sense If it opened a dialog box instead, to alert the user when a date was being requested? Offer them a look at the date in question, so they can decide if they want or are able to throw it on their calendar? Instead of assuming that by interacting with this heretofore unreadable calendar object you intend to accept it? Mind you the .ics icon does not tell the user what date is being requested--Mail does not communicate the date to the user unless and until it's viewed through iCal, and in the workaround you suggest, it assumes the user doesn't mind blindly throwing darts at their calendar. Open Drag Trust? The lack of an inspect-and-accept step in there disregards the user's needs.
I'm not a UI expert by any means, but this seems poorly executed. I appreciate this conversation. But it seems like we're talking about nuances of the problem that aren't the whole problem. I do feel like we're wandering in the wilderness together a little bit, and arguing about whether that's rain falling on us or ...I don't know, I guess I'm saying it's urine? Wow, this analogy is regrettable now that it's reached the conclusion. Either way, we're getting wet.