Rolly, that's taking it a bit far, isn't it? Whether you agree with how they do it or not, Blizzard's first priority has to be game balance, and they clearly felt this sword was unbalanced. I disagree with them on that count, but they did what they felt they had to do.

It would not affected balance one iota at it's stated stats of 3.80 speed and 3006 TED.
There would have still been better in heroic raids and in Firelands.

Rossi has posted the stats that it had prior to being reduced to 3006 TED to justify saying it deserved a nerf, it was then nerfed AGAIN just prior to 4.2 release.

I agree that is "feels" underhanded, but I don't think it "is" underhanded. I'm remembering Blizzard removing the ability of guilds to gain Guild XP from completing achievements only 2-3 days after introducing it, in the Cataclysm expansion. In both situations, it seems to me that Blizzard had a particular concept of how the thing was supposed to go, and either their assumptions were wrong or their calculations were wrong, someone ran the numbers, and someone else panicked and started screaming "change it now now now!".

In other words, I think Blizzard is guilty of doing more reacting rather than getting it the way they intend it to be.