Oh. Well, those are not neccesary compared to luck for example, in my opinion. Stats are the most important things in my opinion.
Not really. Six strength will allow you to use all weapons and five starting luck is more than enough to get booted out of all the casinos. Only need enough SPECIAL points to qualify for the perks you want.
To really drive the point home the difference between 1 Intelligence and 10 Intelligence across 29 level ups will be 130.5 skill points. I bet it's quite possible to play a character that starts off with a Intelligence of 1 and not have it be an epic fail.