I own something like 10 .us domains, some registered to a UK address! - I have bought them both from godaddy and namecheap. So dont understand
they can be taken off you at the drop of a hat, same as .fr domains. tread carefully with domains you are not entitled legally to have. Entitlement is part of godaddies T&C, you sign up and state that you agree to these T&C's
If I can't have .com, I would prefer to use .org because as far as I know it's more popular compared to domain with .us extension. Aside from this having a .us will require you to be a US resident or your business needs to be registered in US.