Fair enough [edit: distinction to make], but the problem is still the existence of exceptions (at least as something that doesn't always terminate the process,

Fair enough [edit: distinction to make], but the problem is still the existence of exceptions (at least as something that doesn't always terminate the process, but that's implied by most useful definitions of "exception" anyway), not anything that would be true of a hypothetical alternate version of Haskell that still had IO, but didn't have exceptions.