President Barack Hussein Obamas
Nobel Prize for Peace

In this segment of the Rachel Maddow Show, Oct 9, 2009, Maddow elucidates better than any source I’ve read or heard how the prize has been awarded in the past.

Nobel Chair, Thorbjoern Jagland, defended choice as being for Obama’s achievements to date and not for anticipated achievements:

“Some people say, and I understand it, isn’t it premature? Too early? Well, I’d say then that it could be too late to respond three years from now,” Nobel Committee chairman Thorbjoern Jagland said. “It is now that we have the opportunity to respond — all of us.”

From AP via Yahoo!: In his 1895 will, Alfred Nobel stipulated that the peace prize should go “to the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between the nations and the abolition or reduction of standing armies and the formation and spreading of peace congresses.”

The name Barack Obama echoes around the world in answer to that criterion for the year past.