Who decides who gets murdered by drones? They won't tell us. It's classified.

[gratuitous]

4. John Brennan and the new American Principles

There was a time when we extolled the Four Freedoms or the Bill of Rights. But now the United States stands for the highest ethical standards, including the hallowed principles of necessity, distinction and proportionality. We don't indiscriminately fire missiles into populated areas to kill every person unlucky enough to be under them; no, we seriously consider whether summary execution is necessary (there's a really, really good reason, even though we can't tell you what it is), that we can distinguish who's about to become pink mist(we're mostly sure that the target of our missile is a very, very bad person, and too bad for anyone around him), and that not too many civilians, innocents, or not very, very bad persons are in the kill zone (but if there are too many collateral casualties, we'll gladly re-classify them as terrorists posthumously).

At least, that's what I gleaned from Brennan's remarks at the Woodrow Wilson Center on May 1, 2012.