So basically rendering the medal worthless then?
Bingo
Given out like the Nobel Peace Prize. They made that a joke out of it when they awarded to the terrorist Yassar Arafat.
Yep - the military/DOD civilian world has made a lot of awards/accolades meaningless. They often use the winning of certain awards as the basis for promotion opportunities and the like but is has gotten to the point where the people not being put in for awards are more the exception than those who are. It used to be that only the very best were honored by being submitted for a chance to win and these days it's only the very worst (and sometimes they are submitted and "win") that aren't considered. I tired of the programs about 20 years ago because they really had become meaningless.