BruceDeitrickPrice, I don’t know if you’re still reading (after my long dry posts), but I’ll add that I sympathize with your apparent intent to improve education — I’m no friend of the educational establishment myself — and phonics may well be a good method of teaching children to read (at an elementary level or students who are having difficulty, anyway), but denying that people can read fluently by sight is not the way to go in trying to convince others of this.
From what I can tell, fluent readers are looking at each letter. What happens over the years is that the brain processes the information faster and faster. Similarly, when a person can play piano from sheet music, they can sit down in front of a totally unknown piece of music and play it. Their brain is processing each note — skipping notes would make nonsense. We know such players have not memorized notes in advance.
I have about 10 videos on YouTube explaining the case against Sight Words. Here is the shortest of them (3 minutes):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D_fIXd9vp5c
And here is the one with the most views:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SCNDFTBkPBQ
Or search Phonics vs. Sight Words for others.