Honestly, I don't see why everyone is so down on the Monk. I've seen two since playing 3.0, and played one of them, and every time, the Monk has become the predominant melee combatant in our series of Planescape campaigns. Here's the best example.
The first party started at 5th level and consisted of an elf monk, a human ranger/rogue (archery based), a dwarf paladin, a dwarf cleric, and a human wizard. Even at the beginning, the paladin was next to useless in combat because he could never *REACH* anything. Between the archer, the cleric, the wizard, and the monk, everything died by the time the damn paladin could tromp his slow, full-plated hide up to the fight. Our battles turned into run-and-guns with the archer and the monk up front while the paladin babysat the casters while they pelted the baddies from long range.
By the time we finished at 18th level, it got even worse. By this time, the paladin was now also a Dwarven Defender and a Templar and the cleric was also a Runecaster, and we had replaced the wizard with a Psychic Warrior.
Even with the additional focus on melee combat, the Dwarven Defender was still so slow he never made it into most melee combat because the monk and the psychic warrior would immediately jump the enemy and anything that tried to get past would get gunned down. The only time the dwarves ever got to bash on anything was when they finally got helms of teleportation.
As for the monk's supposed poor attack bonus, you'd be surprised what you can accomplish when your cleric makes potions of Divine Favor and other fun stuff.