Noel Hegan wrote:

This was on the front page of my newspaper today as a "introduction"
to the Bush state of the nation speech. From an American point of view
how does it read? Is it a true representation of the Bush
administration and the US economy?

You can use statistics to prove anything. You can omit certain numbers,
include an extreme number and leave out certain information.

For example, the comparison on how many American soldier deaths after the
Iraq war vs after WWII: Well the author leaves out all the context, and
leaves out the fact that the world is not the same. The article is aimed
at fooling people unaware of the fallacies of using statistics this way.

For what it's worth, I think bush (yes, lowercase) is a blithering fool,
manipulated by the extremists in his cabinet, and utterly incapable of
leading the country towards betterment (i.e., our social security system
is mathematically proven to be headed towards disaster, but bush just
gave the rich an unnecessary tax cut instead of fixing the system).

Of course, there are people who think differently than I :-)...

--
gabriel