You're misled about what I want to do. I thought I was clear about this, but since it's confused you and Tony both, I guess I didn't explain clearly.

So, just to get this straight, you want an ordinary web browser to make an SSL request of a server

No, I want an ordinary web browser to make an HTTP (non-ssl) request to a man-in-the-middle. That server will open a new *SSL* connection to the target server with the request headers and target URL from the original request. Then the server responds with the request (back to the man-in-the-middle server), and the man-in-the-middle server sends back the request over the normal HTTP channel. Basically, I want to create a virtual connection from the browser to the target server, but I want to see the request and response. The man-in-the-middle server would be configured with the name of the server it's supposed to proxy to, and other than logging the request/response data and translating cookie headers, wouldn't do much with the request itself.

I'm not talking about 31337 hacker tools to decrypt SSL, I'm talking about a simple reverse proxy with the ability to log request/response data before/after sending the request to the target server.