"The problem is not religion, but people"
You cannot change human nature, people are people, for better or for worse: You are always going to have mean people, power hungry people, aggressive people, etc. etc.
What you can change are social instituitions and beliefs.
There are two solutions to religious conflicts as a whole:
1) Change man.
2) Change religion.
Only one is a feasable solution.
"Getting back to today, remember Saddam invading Kuwait etc. What did that have to do with religion? That had everything to do with greed: he wanted the oil. "
Very true, there are plenty of wars and conflict that are totally unrelated to religion, but there are also plenty that are.
"People can be excused for believing that religion causes the worlds problems because all that we see indicates this"
Not all of them, but a good portion of them, are religiously motivated.
"Abolishing religion will do nothing to make the world a better place (Look at communism)"
Abolishing religion cannot work, trying to oppress people into believing something else never works.
However a world without religion would certainly be better than a world with it, and fortunately we are progressing towards that world. The more educated a people get the more secular, the less extremist, the more vague their religious beliefs become.
The reason communism failed has nothing to do with its abolishment of religion btw, it failed because it failed to account for human nature. People will not work too hard, if working does not directly benefit themselves/ their family.
