It has failed to take into account all the circumstance that have a bearing on whether its own general principle,

the protection of American lives and the American way of life,

is being properly served by ignoring the political and historical consequences of the application of indiscriminate and coercive interrogation.

And it has overstated the certitude of its conclusions about torture torture's effectiveness in a few cases

in order to justify the permission of coercive interrogation as the routing practice.

One could unfortunately go on.

Casuistry is about the analysis of complex cases in which layers upon layers of circumstances seem to distance the situation from a generally agreed upon paradigm case.

Hard cases present the unscrupulous with opportunities to obfuscate and confuse

but they also present those of good moral with opportunities to clarify.

The Helakhic development of the Rodef defence provides one example of

how conscientious thinking can weave together general principles with the kind of complicated developments that occur in the real world,

and the issue of torture today is ripe for such debate since there are few harder cases than bloody conflict

which inevitably complicates clear cases of self defence or the protection of others,

the bible itself makes note of this when it reports Jacob's reaction to his impeding battle of Aesop,

Then Jacob was greatly afraid and was distressed That comments on this verse that Jacob was not afraid because he was worried about his own life

but that he was worried that he would kill Aesop's men.

Even though Aesop was coming to kill Jacob and thus Jacob might have had no qualms in killing him first there remains the restriction

to inflict minimal harm and now I quote from "Hence Jacob rightly feared,

lest in the confusion of battle he killed some of Aesop's men outright when he might instead have restrained them by merely inflicting injury upon their limbs".