Andrew,
The proposal was developed in public some time ago (and rather a long time, in this context). We all of us had ample time to raise objections to that and so on, and we knew that the ICG was going to take the different community positions and try to stitch them together.
Well, yes. However, if the basis of an aspect of a proposal doesn't appear to make sense and that that problem isn't identified until after people have time to sit down and actually think about stuff, it seems a bit odd to me to say "oh well, you had your chance to fix it months ago." It's sort of like someone identifying a problem in an Internet Draft in IETF last call and the working group saying "sorry, you should've said something during the working group session a year ago."
CWG (and IETF, for that matter) declined to state anything inconsistent with the numbes community proposal when delivering its proposal, so the numbers community proposal is what we have.
This seems to be an interesting interpretation of "stitch together". An alternative interpretation would be that the ICG would actively work with the operational communities to modify the inconsistencies in order to reach a consensus opinion, not simply be passive and kick everything back to the operational communities to start over as you appear to be suggesting. Regards, -drc