But by being a slave, Anakin was already too old to be a Jedi, and it shows. He shouldn't have been trained in the first place, yet the Jedi were so entranced by their prophesy they couldn't resist training the boy. He's powerful, but he's pretty disastrous as a Jedi no matter where you look. A time bomb waiting to explode ...

You mention that Tatooine was too remote ... but how about Kamino where the clones were grown? I mean, if Dooku/Palps wanted the clones to be found (and they did), why remove the location from all of the maps?

Palps was pulling the strings all along ... allowing the Jedi to think that they were thinking for themselves. Palps set plenty of traps for them along the way, and the Jedi dove for every carrot dangled in front of them.

I hate the idea of a fatherless birth, but the Palpatine/Darth Bubonic conception plot works way better for me than a Christ-like birth. And I don't really think there's a question about what this midi-chlorian confession meant ... I can't see why Lucas would have included the line of dialogue in Sith had he not intended to suggest that a Sith lord engineered Anakin's birth. George is not exactly subtle, you know.