Mountaindog, what you say is correct in every way. However, i just dont want the message to get lost that LDL or HDL are not important. The bottom line is that even when not looking at particle size every double blind placebo long term study shows that reducing LDL reduces cardiovascular accidents. When i was entering medical school, as long as your LDL was less than 130 it was considered "good." Then came long ten year study where they compared patients with no history or adverse risk of cardiovascular accidents and divided the group to patients that had LDL of 100-130 and the other group that was less than 100. After ten years, there was clear advantage that the less than 100 group fared much better.
Then they started dissecting the study and looked at data between the people that were between 70-100 and then ones that were less than 70. Guess what? the people that had less than 70 still fared better than the group that was 70-100.
You are right that HDL is they key. I rather have an HDL of 80 with LDL of 120 than LDL of 80 and HDL of 30. But if you can manage to boost your HDL to 60+ and keep LDLs low then you have the magic ticket