CounterPunch.org | The Nobel Peace Prize has long been tarnished. It was awarded to President Obama before he had spent a year in office with no significant peace initiative on his record, and before he became one of the more aggressive presidents in history in terms of projecting US military power unilaterally. Earlier the award was shared by war criminal Henry Kissinger and Le Duc Tho, the head of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (who refused to accept his honor and the money that comes with it), and Teddy Roosevelt, imperialist war monger of an earlier era.