Why TWO English Dubs?

I sort of lost track of ‘Rurouni Kenshin’ after they stopped airing it here in Belgium 4-5 years ago, but I rediscovered the series last year. I own the first two seasons on DVD in the original Japanese version, but out of curiosity I’ve also seen several of the English-dubbed episodes on Youtube. Yesterday I was cleaning out one of my cupboards and found a couple of old VHS tapes. I put them in the tape recorder and discovered a bunch of programmes I taped around the year 2002, amongst them a few episodes of ‘Rurouni Kenshin’ in the English dub (the first four episodes of the Kyoto-arc). The strange thing is that the version I found on the tapes, although in English, is a different one and I’d like to know why it exists.

Here are several things that struck me about it:

1) Several of the characters’ names have been changed; Kenshin is known as ‘Kenshee’, Kaoru as ‘Cori’ and Yahiko as ‘Yoshi’. When first bought the DVD’s last year I did remember thinking the character names used to be different, but later on I figured I must have remembered this incorrectly. Now, strangely, it seems I was right all along.
2) Kenshin is, apparently, going to Edo (???) instead of Kyoto.
3) Saito sneezes and, instead of giving a harmless comment, the waitress calls him a pig. (?!)
4) During the famous firefly-farewell-scene, the last thing Kenshin says to Kaoru before leaving for … Edo, apparently, is: ‘Thank you Cori, thank you for everything you’ve given me. I just have to go to Edo, but that doesn’t mean I don’t love you. Goodbye Cori.’(!?!?!?) Whatever happened to just saying ‘Sayonara’? And then they cut out the kanji-epilogue at the end, immediately skipping to the end credits right after Kenshin walks away (completely ruining the dramatic effect, in my opinion).
5) Most of the voice cast seems the same; however both Seta Sôjiro and Okita Sôji are clearly dubbed by a different person with a much deeper voice. Kaoru’s voice is also different, and strangely, I prefer her this way. I can’t tell if Sano’s different, but if he’s not, he did a better job in this version. As for the others; their performance is much better in the other version.
6) Also, the lines have been translated quite differently. Several times they took quite a leap from the original text, making characters say things that make them seem a bit out of sorts. For instance, the way they’re phrasing it, Kenshin suddenly seems adamant in letting his inner Battousai loose to fight Shishio, giving it a fighting chance and to see which life works best for him.
7) The translators clearly disliked silences, because they’ve also given a few characters an inner-monologue or off-screen-texts when there should be silence. (Cori? Did you hear what I said? Cori?)

I realise that if you get ten translators to translate the same passage, you end up with ten different texts (although having Kenshin say ‘I love you’ to Kaoru seems a bit of a stretch to me). Even so, I’ve noticed that the manga, the Japanese DVD with Dutch subtitles and the English dub on youtube seem to have a translation that mostly corresponds with each other, so I’m tempted to consider the interpretation they’ve offered me as correct.

I don’t understand why would they go to the trouble to write an alternate translation, change the names of a few characters and enlist the same voice-actors (save for a few) to do the same job twice? Perhaps the translators eventually realised their mistakes, wanted a second chance and tried to stick to the original script? But if this were so, then I don’t understand why they had the inferior version shipped to other countries.

Has anyone seen the series in this version or could possibly explain to me why it exists?