Are you somewhat suggesting we should look at Yonah as the folk group entertaining the enemy until the troups arrive? :)
Interesting way to put it, but yes. I think Intel made the decision to dump Netburst somewhere in 2004 (so not long before they announced it). I think this was a major stumble point, as they presented no real backup plans for months after that (except for some vague references to dual core). By that time, Yonah development must have been well underway, far too late to switch from 32-bits to 64-bits.
Now your theory is also interesting, what if Yonah was 64-bits to begin with? I think given the transistor count that is not possible. Yonah has 151.6 million transistors, only 11.6 million more than Dothan with the same amount of cache. And they have to put a whole second core in there ;). I can see how they can do that with a little optimization in the caches here and there, but not while also packing both cores with a ton of new features at the same time.
Thus my theory is that Merom derivatives Conroe and Woodcrest were concieved and the next-generation architecture was pulled forward to replace Netburst, because of which Yonah got caught in a tight spot.
I agree it wouldn't make much sense for Intel to release two different architectures on the same process in the same year, but in the context of the abnormal circumstances (the major roadmap shuffle of last year) it can be explained :).
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