Quite possibly, but I didn't say they necessarily wanted to, some people just want/need to keep their systems as secure as they can. I kick a ball around the park in my spare time and have a great time, but I don't call myself a footballer...(with good reason as anyone seeing me play will agree with)

Is that level of knowledge and ability going to keep you safe and protected from the top guns? No, but if it can keep you protected from the script kiddies and automated attacks then you're head and shoulders above most targets.

Pre-built tools and live distros can help, regardless of what you choose to call yourself.

As I have posted a number of times before, I feel people will be better off compiling their own attack distro.   I completely agree with that and in fact I would be willing to say that anyone that could not do that will have a very limited career as a pentester. 

However, I see nothing wrong at all with a beginner referencing a tool off of Backtrack to see how a tool should work as he is learning to compile and customize his own distro. I humbly disagree that Backtrack or other live CDs are not an OS and just a tool,especially when installed to the hard drive. Ubuntu is a live CD and I consider that a legitimate OS.  As I mentioned before, Muts (whose skill level is highly respected) uses Backtrack as his main distro.  A while back, as a fun project, I wanted to see how far I could customize Backtrack and was able with a little effort to customize it into a fairly decent distro that had every media and office app I wanted, etc.  I should say that customizing it is different and a little more cumbersome due to its “module” approach.  I asked Muts one time why he chose to use Slax instead of another distro that might be a little more universal in its approach. He responded that he chose Slax because of the ease of adding modules before burning the final live CD.  That way you could customize your own live CD. Interestingly, he then told me he didn’t run it as a live CD because it was too slow and preferred a hard drive or VMware install.  It makes me wonder if down the road he might migrate to something like Ubuntu.

Thats just my perception of it and each person will have to decide whats best for them. I do think you can make a very strong case for compiling your own attack distro, even for casual use by an admin.