> Well I'm not saying there are no laryngeals.
Well, if we allow the existence of the laryngeals, and the attested later
existence of long vowels from -eH-, then the question is whether the long
vowels can be taken back to PIE, or whether we should posit -eH- for PIE.
Some bits of evidence do exist:
(a) Sanskrit (RV) shows hiatus in a few places which can be explained
from -eH-e- but not from -e:-e
(b) Sanskrit has forms that show an alternation between aspirated and
unaspirated consonants (although analogy has levelled a lot of cases).
This can be explained from *-C-e-H / -C-H, but no so easily from long
vowels.
I won't go through the whole list - you probably know the sort of evidence.
In any case, it is not impossible that a situation existed with long vowels
and laryngeals - but is this what we should reconstruct?
Peter