Quite surprised to see you write that!!It *is* fairly serious 'bug' or omission in Neomail - I do not think it would have been designed that way as I have not seen another email program / system do it that way?
As far as I was aware the convention was that a 'reply' removed attachments whereas a 'forward' kept them intact as most of the time when forwarding you *will* want the person to receive the attachment as well.
It seems a minor 'bug' when you have somewhere to download it to and a fast Internet connection but I don't think you would think that way if you were accessing your email via a PDA over a 9600bps connection and that 1Mb attachment you needed to 'forward' would take 15 minutes to download - oh and then 15 minutes to re-attach to the email whereas the server running another web email program could do it almost immediately.
Of course if (as you say) you don't want the attachments forwarded - all the email programs I have seen give you the option of removing them!
Noticed a small problem with Neomail - if you receive a message into your Neomail mailbox that contains an attachment - if you then try to "forward" that message it loses the attachment whereas a normal email program (Outlook etc.) would have sent it as well?
I would not call Outlook a normal email program unless you see its built-in virus features as normal. :) I prefer that additional step as you call it as it loses all the junk which people attach to emails nowadays.