rm -f and unexecutable directories

[Ed Avis]

% mkdir -p fred/jim 
% chmod a-x fred/jim 
% rm -rf fred 
rm: cannot chdir from `fred' to `jim': Permission denied   

But since I own the directory I could change the permissions and then
remove it.  Shouldn't rm do this if I gave the 'force' option?  I
thought that would take all measures necessary.

After all, rm -f doesn't care about permissions on files before
removing them, so shouldn't it work equally well with directories?  
Even if it does have to chmod u+rx them behind the scenes.

% rm --version | head -1
rm (coreutils) 5.0 

-- 
Ed Avis <address@hidden>