This discussion over whether creationism and ID are distinguishable confuses principle with practice. It also conflates the public tenets of a movement with the views of the members of the movement.
Are creationism and ID distinguishable in principle? Yes. I think this is the point that several people here are trying to make.
Are creationism and ID distinguishable in practice? I'm highly skeptical, since as you also observe, ID seems to be a stripped-down obfuscation of creationism.
Looking at their public tenets, ID and creationism are not interchangeable, because any day some folks could come along who believe in ID but not in creationism. However, until such folks come along, I think it would be safe to say that IDists and creationists are empirically interchangeable, even if ID and creationism are not. Is there anyone out there who believes in ID but not creationism?
P.S... Scientology is a potential example of IDists who are not creationists, because this says that "With respect to evolution, Scientology holds that life forms have evolved, but that a much greater force is directing those changes", though Hubbard's views seem far too muddled to say for sure. At least, Scientologists do seem to believe that humans contain a "genetic entity" that has progressed through many stages, including Clam and Sloth, before ending up in humans, and that aliens have caused "incidents" in this process. So it sounds like Scientologists would agree with a broad formulation of ID (directed evolution), even though they are not involved in the ID or creationism movements.
Recently, Sean Carroll, Carl Zimmer, and Phil Plait have all decided to stop appearing on BloggingHeads.TV (BHTV), and PZ Myers announced he would not appear on it in the future, after a disastrous decision to have creationist Michael Behe interviewed by the linguist and non-biologist John McWhorter, who failed to call Behe on his standard BS.
I'm hereby publicly announcing that I intend to stay on BloggingHeads.TV.
Why? Two main reasons:
1) Robert Wright publicly said that this was foolish, apologized for the poor editorial oversight that led to it, and says they're going to try never to do this again. This looks sincere to me, and given that it's sincere, people really ought to be allowed more chance than this to recover from their mistakes.
2) Bloggingheads.TV has given me a forum to debate accomodationist atheists who are insufficiently condemning of religion - for example my diavlog with Adam Frank, author of "The Constant Fire". Adam Frank argues that, while of course we now know that God doesn't exist, nonetheless scientific wonder at the universe and its mysteries has a lot in common with the roots of religion. And I said this was wishful thinking, historically ignorant of how religions really arose and propagated themselves, and a continuation of such theistic bad habits as thinking that things of which we are temporarily ignorant are "sacred mysteries". And no one at BHTV complained that I was being too confrontational, or too anti-religious, or that it was unfair to have the diavlog be between two atheists.
If BHTV is willing to let me come on and (politely) kick hell out of atheists who aren't atheistic enough to suit me, then I don't believe that their unfortunate failure to have Behe interviewed by someone who could call his BS, represents any deep hidden agenda in favor of religion and against science.
Rather, I think it represents a commitment to having interesting discussions by people who intelligently disagree with each other and have something courteous to say about it - even if that discussion wanders into the fearsome death zones where science does ("does not!") clash with religion - and this commitment managed to go wrong on one or two occasions.
My friends and fellow antitheists, this is an important commitment while most of the world is continuing to pretend that there is no conflict between science and religion. It's not surprising if that commitment goes wrong now and then. It is not reasonable to expect that a commitment to repeatedly discuss a scary controversy will never go wrong. It may well go wrong again despite Robert Wright's best intentions. But unless it starts to go wrong systematically, I'm going to stay on BHTV, arguing that science and religion are not compatible.
Of course, if most other non-accomodationists jump ship from BHTV as a result of the Behe affair, then it will become a hangout for accomodationists only. "Evaporative Cooling of Group Beliefs" is another reason why you should put forth at least a little effort to "Tolerate Tolerance" - to not insist that all your potential trade-partners punish the same people you've labeled defectors, exactly the way you want them punished, before you cooperate. Yes, Behe is an enemy of science, but Wright is not; and Wright may also dislike Behe, yet not wish to implement exactly the same punishment-policy toward Behe that you advocate; and that needs to be all right, if we're all going to end up cooperating.