Yesterday, Kenny MacAskill, Scotland's Justice Secretary, described the terminally ill Abdul Baset Ali al-Megrahi as suffering under "a sentence imposed by a higher power". I am quite staggered by this. I expect little of my party functionaries and government place-men nowadays; but even so it beggars belief that in the 21st century this man should be talking about cancer as a punishment from God. Clearly Mr MacAskill has a far deeper insight into The Workings Of The Universe than is usual in a mere career politician. I mean, how else could he possibly know how the scales of Metaphysical Justice behave? But the idea of "a sentence imposed by a higher power" is one that ought to come back to haunt him. For a start, there is the issue of how the nation's millions of cancer sufferers will react to the information that the disease they have occurs as "a punishment". Do they perhaps want to "confess" to something? You know, talk openly and frankly about the really bad thing they did that caused God to give them cancer? Maybe they once blew up a civilian airliner full of perfectly innocent people -- like, uh... the USS Vincennes did? And since they obviously have this disease for a "good reason", how do they feel about using up precious NHS resources to treat something that they quite simply "deserve to have"? Surely the statement by His Astounding Justiceness has now made it clear to them that they must all discharge themselves from hospital at once, and go and die quietly and cheaply somewhere else -- like the guilty dogs they obviously are? And, presumably, all those cancer sufferers up and down the country — shaking with fear before their surgery, or sick beyond description from their chemotherapy, or wasted to skin and bone with cachexia, or just counting the days they survive after their bad prognosis — presumably they're all perfectly happy to be dragged into a medico-moral paradigm that just about passed muster in ... the 13th century? Or are they perhaps a bit unhappy about this attempt to make them live under what are, in fact, "Taliban values"?

A lot of people get cancer who have done nothing wrong. It was inevitable that a well know bad guy would get it eventually.

No. Methinks MacAskill (Mac Ass Kill?) Is attempting some political B.S. to try and justify his stupid decision. If cancer was a sentence imposed by a higher power, why did it wait so freaking long to do it?

Who ever declared that is an idiot.

No I dont think so. I think it is a random chance occurence. I think saying it is helped to justify releasing him.