As the Afghan war has evolved, the Predator and other unmanned aircraft have become favorites of the Obama Administration, which views them as means for applying precision force. Critics of this practice mounted a major campaign to stigmatize such operations as illegal and illegitimate. In March, as criticism gathered force, State Department legal advisor Harold Hongju Koh advanced a strong defense of "targeted" drone operations against al Qaeda and its associated forces. The speech was all the more notable for the fact that Koh, a former Yale Law School dean, had earlier been a critic of such operations.
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