Swiping an app away will effectively "kill" most apps. You can test this out using ADB if you have the SDK installed. Swipe everything out of your recents list, then launch the browser. Use ADB to run 'ps' on the device and verify that the com.google.android.browser process is running. Go to the home screen, it's still running. Launch some other apps, and the com.google.android.browser process is still there. Swipe it out of the recents list, however, and the process is gone.
You can create a test app to further verify, and log the onDestroy() call in your Activity. It's not called when you back or home out of the app, or when you launch other apps. It does get called when you swipe the app out of the recents list though.
I do agree that the recent apps list isn't really "multitasking". The apps in the list aren't necessarily even running, the processes could have been killed by the memory manager long before you try to re-open it. However, you can't argue that the only purpose is to jump quickly to other apps when the swiping makes the actual process go away.