It seems to me that the question at hand is
whether or not this gives drafts any additional
weight in standards-land.
no, I don't think that's the question. it's already well established
that standards-track RFCs cannot have normative references to I-Ds.
rather, the questions at hand are whether an official archive of
internet-drafts would
a) impair their utility, and thereby hurt IETF's ability to function, or
b) violate the rights of I-D authors who allowed IETF to publish
their I-Ds based on the understanding that IETF would only do
so for a short time
Keith