<p>So Google Analytics does not have an API that we can use to get our data, so is there an efficient way to programaticly fetch the data collected by Google, without logging it locally?</p>

<p>Edit:
I would prefer a Python or PHP solution but anything will work.</p>

Well, it depends on what you want to do with the data. If you only want to process part of it, then I don't think it is difficult.
Here's a basic web search with a hit explanations from Google and someone else:
http://www.google.com/support/analytics/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=55561
http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2008-01-17-n73.html