Hi Cazza - Welcome to the board.
You have raised a lot of good points here. I can't help thinking that your main motivator here is fear, principally fear of armageddon etc. When people leave the JWs it's hard to shift the fear of Armageddon. The WTS makes it a clear focus of all their activities, as everything you do in the organisation is supposed to go towards your Armageddon protection policy.
Surely an organisation which uses fear to control behaviour is very far removed from the original concept of Christianity. Time is rolling on and still no sign of the end of the world, each so called 'date' has come and gone. Don't let this fear ruin your life - enjoy what you have now instead of dreading the future.I had so many similar questions about the Paradise Earth and never got any satisfactory answers, just the cover all things response - 'Leave it to Jehovah'.
The loving God as portrayed by the JWs is not one who would strike down millions of honest, decent people (including innocent children) just because they are not part of a small cult.These two ideas are too conflicting to be credible. If you really push a JW they will have to admit that they believe that everyone who is not part of their org will perish - classic command and control strategy. They are reluctant to say it at times but that is their core belief.
Please don't torture yourself about this - as you read more on the site you will see that there are many high calibre biblical scholars who are able to point out the misinterpretations of the JWs. I would agree that reading Crisis of Conscience would be a good start - keep reading the site and hope you will stick around.
FF