Move wordpress directory but somehow keep old path?

I run Keynoteuser.com and way back when I grafted in wordpress as the news engine. Now I’d like to really have a full fledged wordpress site and dump the old shell. The problem is, the way it is now, WordPress is installed into the /news/ directory and then the loop is embedded in the front page pulling info from the /news/ directory.

I really don’t want to have the /news/ folder any longer, but if I move it, ALL the links out there in the world that point to stories on my site will break. So, I want to know if I’m just stuck, or if there’s some way I could use the permalink system to simply add /news/ to everything, even if that’s not a “category” I use.

I have a feeling, to make sure nothing breaks, I’m just going to be stuck with keeping the /news/ directory and following the instructions to have my index page outside that folder.