NOBEL SECRETARY REGRETS GIVING OBAMA THE PRIZE

One of the former overseers of the Nobel peace prize now expresses regret over giving it to Obama:

Awarding the Nobel Peace Prize to US President Barack Obama in 2009 failed to achieve what the committee hoped it would, its ex-secretary has said.

Geir Lundestad told the AP news agency that the committee hoped the award would strengthen Mr Obama.

Instead, the decision was met with criticism in the US. Many argued he had not had any impact worthy of the award.

Mr Lundestad, writing in his memoir, Secretary of Peace, said even Mr Obama himself had been surprised.

"No Nobel Peace Prize ever elicited more attention than the 2009 prize to Barack Obama," Mr Lundestad writes.

"Even many of Obama's supporters believed that the prize was a mistake," he says. "In that sense the committee didn't achieve what it had hoped for".

Why would anybody think a mere prize would help anybody when they don't even prove they're worthy of it, past, present or future? And how do they intend to make improvements in their policies so that farces aren't performed again?