You said,

"If you test with a resident debugger in place, then ship with the debugger removed, you haven't tested the shipped system!"

With which I agree.

However, if you use your ICE for testing, I doubt that will be among the deliverables. JTAG, ICE's, and debuggers aren't used for testing the running deliverable system.

Testing involves applying a series of carefully designed rigorous procedures to the deliverable system under normal operating conditions and some abnormal conditions in the normal operating environment. Not even the space shuttle (with which I have considerable familiarity) is required to meet standards under abnormal conditions in an abnormal environment. Perhaps it should be, but those circumstances, generally, are "ground-ruled" out.

RE