"One of the things that we've got to do is put a legal

architecture in place and we need Congressional help to do that to make sure that not only am I reined in, but any President is reined in, in terms of some of the decisions that we're making," Obama said in an interview on October 18, 2012 during the taping of the Daily Show. "Now, there are some tough tradeoffs. I mean, there are times where there are bad folks somewhere on the other side of the world, and you've got to make a call and it's not optimal. But when you look at our track record, what we've been able to do is to say we ended the war in Iraq; we're winding down the war in Afghanistan; we've gone after al Qaeda and its leadership," Obama said. He, however, said that al Qaeda is still active in other parts of North Africa and the Middle East, besides maintaining that actions against the terror outfit have to be consistent with international and American laws. Early this week, a bipartisan group of 11 influential Senators sought from Obama, "legal justification" for counter-terrorism operations or the armed drones to kill American citizens. "As the Senate considers a number of nominees for senior national security positions, we ask that you ensure that Congress is provided with the secret legal opinions outlining your authority to authorise the killing of Americans in the course of counter-terrorism operations," the Senators wrote. Prominent among the Senators include Ron Wyden, Mike Lee, Mark Udall, Chuck Grassley, Jeff Merkley, Susan Collins, Dick Durbin, Patrick Leahy, Tom Udall, Mark Begich and Al Franken. "In our view, if individual Americans choose to take up arms against the United States as part of an opposing fighting force, there will clearly be circumstances in which the President has the authority to use lethal force against those Americans, just as President Lincoln had the authority to direct Union troops to fire upon Confederate forces during the Civil War," the Senators wrote. "It is vitally important, however, for Congress and the American public to have a full understanding of how the executive branch interprets the limits and boundaries of this authority, so that Congress and the public can decide whether this authority has been properly defined, and whether the President's power to deliberately kill American citizens is subject to appropriate limitations and safeguards," they said.