You argue that you would go with the French version because you find their style more eloquent and pure? I respect your choice. I simply present the view that since the words are used by Americans interchangeably, that, in America, people can choose which spelling they find appropriate for their purposes. It reminds me of the clique: tomato, tomahto. Of course that's a pronunciation, not a spelling preference but the idea is the same. Especially since the accents are used for pronunciation purposes.

Except it apparently did.. strange

I think we can all agree that there is a difference between the different ways of spelling resume and cat versus kat. After all, in no dictionary are you going to find kat or elefant or phish, yet many dictionaries contain all three versions of resume. If people begin to alter the way they spell these words often enough that they become synonymous, then will I agree with you.
ps. sorry about the name change, the site wouldn't let me submit under anonymous#2 again.

I'm mainly commenting on this thread just to say I was a part of it... an almost 10 year conversation is quite an accomplishment. As far as I can tell two accents should be used if you want to be proper, or when writing to a French person. No accents is acceptable, especially if you don't know how/ are too lazy to write the accents, or if you are writing to an American. One accent is used when you would have not used accents but you also want to use the word resume (to continue) and you need to differentiate between the two. To say that one way is more accurate than the others is slightly naïve. People have the way they prefer to write it and as long as the meaning is clear it shouldn't matter which way they choose.