That's only the kind of thing you tell to kids (or yourself during your weaker moments) to keep them spirited and to keep them from succumbing to despair and depression in the face of the cruel reality of living in a feudal system where they are naught but expendable tools for the nobility.
(ignore me, will you)
Itachi is a total loser, and a weakling. His only useful power, Tsukiyomi, turns seconds into days so he can torture other ninjas with his emo self. He was killed by a disease of all things.
Looking at it another way, he was afraid of Jiraya and said that it 'wouldn't matter how many men we had against someone like him'. Jiraya killed by a 7 man team. Great insight, Itachi has. Then there is the crap with his village. Lets see: kill my family, friends and entire clan in order to 'save the village'. Sure, no other option. He couldn't ahve spared a few of his clan, right? Certainly he had to torture his brother. I mean the man is supposed to be a pacifist but he kills everyone he loves.
Itachi is a waste of ink, and he has managed to make the same of his brother. The series would be so much better without him.
Fixed.
To be frank, though, Itachi was a loser. Not because of lack of power, he certainly had enough of that, but because he was manipulated by those in power and slaughtered his own clan. There's simply no justification for that. Furthermore, he handled the case with his brother just as badly. I guess he simply was utterly terrible at communicating with people. No wonder Akatsuki paired him with a shark instead of a human.
Actually, in all honesty, Itachi is one of my favorite characters except for those issues you listed. Thing is they made him who he was. He made a poor decision silencing his clan with Madara's help as well as a poor decision treating his brother the way he did.
Frankly the way Sasuke was treated smells of manipulation by Madara from the very beginning.
And definitely a troll. I was bored, what can I say. Most people like Itachi so he seemed a likely target. Frankly the Naruto forum could use a bit of excitement (not suggesting that I provided any: obvious troll is fail).