Raise of hands: Do you believe the CIA?

Raise your hand if you believe the CIA did a good job of collecting and analyzing intelligence leading up to the Iraq war in 2003?

Now I need to see a raise of hands for those of you who believe the CIA's latest data on health care are also accurate.

So where am I going with this? Take your typical non-thinking citizen who blames the CIA on bad intel before 2003, yet believes the data collected by the CIA about world health care are accurate. Just because Cuba says it has a certain infant mortality rate, and the CIA reports it, it must be true.

Your typical non-thinker will not see this as anything to worry about. The CIA -- if it must exist at all -- must have lied about what it knew in 2003, but would never screw up "facts" that support the desire for universal health care, if such a utopian system can even exist in the real world.

Well, Richard Cohen, one of the world's biggest idiots (how does this guy actually get his stuff published?), relies on the CIA data. It must be friggen' true, since it backs up his belief system that the U.S. has one of the world's worst health care systems in world.

According to the CIA, our system -- in some categories -- is no better than Cuba's. And of course Europe is where it's at, dude.

For statistical refutation, we need only refer to the CIA's World Factbook (no lefty think tank, to be sure) and check the health statistics. The United States is 49th in life expectancy. Our proud nation bests the Libyans in this category but not Japan, France, Spain, the United Kingdom and, of course, Italy. You not only live about two years longer in Italy, but you eat better, too.

That's where I'd end my research. If the CIA says it's so, it must be so. Richard, you do realize that most of that data is self-reported? That very little critical analysis goes into that fact book? That the GOP is not really babbling total nonsense about health care when some of its members say that we have one of the best health care systems in the world?

But in the mind of a liberal, facts are bent to support a mythical world view.

Keep up the good fight, is my advice to all you thinkers out there who value intellectual honesty. We are winning.

In the meantime, I'd like to know how many people travel to Cuba for health care? Or even Italy? Do you know why Italians spend less on heath care? Want to eat while in the hospital? Then mama needs to bring you a meal, 'cause the hospital ain't going to do it. Just one small example.

Next time I need surgery, I'll be in Roma, man...