In case you haven't heard yet, this morning former President Jimmy Carter was
awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. It was actually a long overdue honor and very
well deserved. Except for a technical problem to do with nominating
procedure, Carter would have been awarded the prize in 1981, along with Anwar
Sadat and Menachem Begin. Nonetheless, it is certainly well deserved.

The only other US President to win the Nobel Peace Prize was Theodore
Roosevelt. Teddy Roosevelt was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1906 for his
work in the negotiations that led to the Treaty of Portsmouth ending the
Russo-Japanese War in 1905. You may be surprised, but this also made him also
the first American to win a Nobel Prize in any category.

The next likely US President to win the Prize will be Bill Clinton for both
his work in the Middle East and Northern Ireland. However, the current
President should most likely forget any hope of winning the Prize, given
today's comments. The Nobel Peace Prize committee took the extremely unusual
step of criticizing the Bush administration today for its policies.

Gunnar Berge, the Nobel committee chairman, contrasted the 78-year-old
Carter's success in using diplomacy to negotiate peace between Egypt and
Israel with Bush's threats to use force against Iraq. "[Jimmy Carter's award]
should be interpreted as a criticism of the line that the current
administration has taken,'' he said. ''It's a kick in the leg to all that
follow the same line as the United States.''

Wirt Atmar

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