Picture Element Explanation.

Hi all I hope this message finds you well :)

I have some questions / concerns about this picture element; I imagine that
this is not the first time someone has called out this proposed
implementation.

Some background on myself (though I don't generally like to call out my
area's of expertise) however as this is my introductory email to the list
perhaps this is a case where it is valid to do so.

I've been developing in the web for some twenty plus years now; building
everything from small static sites for private business to large scale CMS
/ GIS web applications since NCSA Mosaic was released.

I've watched HTML transform from the old days of blink tags and lovely
"site hit counters" to Tables for layout and all the other lovely mistakes
that were made back then including of course the "browser wars" when I ran
a small business
built on a custom built CMS that pre-dates  Wordpress or even PHP Nuke.

I've built 20-30 or so GIS cross browser web applications during these
"Browser wars" where IE 6 was the vain of my existence.

Beyond being a web developer my vocational training is actually in Graphic
Design - of which I've been working in photoshop / Illustrator since it's
inception. IMHO CSS and the power of it was revealed to me with sites like
: http://www.csszengarden.com/ in 2003 and it was sites like these that
caused a revolution for the web.

....

But that's enough about myself. :)

My question is as follows:

I am a purist and strongly feel that any "Styling / Cosmetic" decisions
should reside within the CSS alone and HTML should only be the "construct"
containing structure only. The picture element feels like it's trying to
accomplish
something in the wrong place.

Would it not be a cleaner solution to simply have cross browser support for
"*content: url()*" instead? or perhaps there is something that I am missing
here I would love for someone to explain to me why this approach is better
than a CSS solution.
and please not dismiss it with a simple phrase.. show me your code.

Perhaps it is too late but I fear that the advent of this picture element
will be looked at in the future just as like "Tables for layout" did in the
past.

Your comments are encouraged and greatly welcomed.

My fiddle is here: http://jsfiddle.net/n935nznp and supported in chrome.

Cheers and all the best.

Paul Deschamps.