_sat not permitted on tex instructions

This only happens in surface shaders, whenever i use saturate on a texture sample and use the return value in any way with o.Specular
it gives me this error: D3D shader assembly failed with: (26): error X5911: _sat not permitted on tex* instructions.

float texture = tex2D(_MyTex, myUv).r;
float value = saturate(texture); <--- this compiles until here if the value is not used below.
o.Specular = specularity * value; <-- this gives the error if i use the above value

Googling this gives only one smiliar result on Strumpy shader editor.

EDIT: Oddly enough, pragma target 3.0 solves the issue but why wouldnt it work in 2.0???