So, Which is it?

The BBC reports today that three Islamic plotters who intended to down several passenger jets between the UK and North America in a spectacular massacre that would rival that of 9/11, have been given life terms.

Airline plot trio get life terms

Three men who plotted to blow up liquid bombs on flights from the UK to North America have been jailed for life, with minimum terms of up to 40 years.

Ringleader Abdulla Ahmed Ali, 28, was jailed for at least 40 years.

Plot "quartermaster" Assad Sarwar, 29, must serve at least 36 years, while Tanvir Hussain, 28, was jailed for at least 32 years at Woolwich Crown Court.

[...]

A fourth man, Umar Islam, 31, convicted of the more general conspiracy to murder charge, was also given a life sentence and will serve a minimum of 22 years in prison.

A life sentence is not a minimum of 32 years or 36 years or even 40 years regardless of what the government tells us it is. A life sentence should mean, by definition, that the sentenced perpetrator would be ultimately hauled out of prison as cold as a mackerel however long it takes to reach room temperature.

It was not long ago that the convicted Lockerbie bomber, also sentenced to multiple life terms, was released early by Scottish authorities on compassionate grounds. The bomber reportedly has advancing stages of colon cancer.

It seems disingenuous to me that the public should be falsely pacified with statements assuring that evildoers will spend the rest of their lives behind bars when, the truth be told, a terrorist could be fully capable of bombing something else at the comfortable old age of 60 (or 53 in Islam's case) after being released having served the minimum sentence.

Fine, sentence these murders to 40,36 and 32 years. Just don't tell me it is a life sentence.