I mean, have you seen pictures of his cell? He spends his free time drinking green tea and gardening! Gardening for Christ's sake!
I haven't, but that sounds pretty reasonable. Two different things here. First, he is currently under arrest, not being punished of anything. Second, even if he was being punished, the point of imprisonment is just that, imprisonment. Not torture. Not driving someone insane.
Just like prisons in Nordic countries
(and in quite a few others, I think), offer several modern conveniences. Inmates are often allowed to keep TVs, radios, coffee makers and game consoles - if there's room. Which is good. Like I said, it's not supposed to be torture, and most of the inmates are expected to return to society one day... and I'd prefer that they return sane.
I won't even bother to wait until someone says that everyone wants to be in a prison like that. They don't. Nordic countries have one of the lowest
incarceration rates (warning: links to pdf-file) in the world. As you can see, imprisonment in itself is a valid punishment.
I agree with James. It is a waste to spend so many resources on this one horrible person. Just because we can keep him alive doesn't mean that we should though. A civilized scociety wouldn't kill him, but we are FAR from being civilized in the ways that you are thinking.
And because we shouldn't keep him alive, we are not civilized society and we shouldn't keep him alive because we aren't civilized society?
Circular reasoning. You - we - or whoever don't become magically civilized unless we work towards it.
Second, this is not about keeping someone alive, this is about not killing someone. Different things. Terri Schiavo was kept alive, Saddam should be kept from being killed. And yes, we absolutely should refrain from killing him, or "keep him alive", if you prefer that. The most basic human right is the right to live.
As far as your waste of resources go, even if we ignore the fact that Saddam is just one man, and thus requires not very much resources at all, you'd still be far better off trying to limit the consumption by the general population in western countries. Simply because it's many, many times larger than the amount of prisoners. Currently, there are countless of things that drain more resources than giving prisoners humane living conditions.
About Hitler, I actually admire him somewhat because to me, he was the only honest politican ever...
Oh, I gotta hear this one. Please explain.