This gets to a key problem of the secretive American drone program. Its clandestine and unaccountable nature means that when the U.S. does make a mistake, as it inevitably will, instead of apologizing and making some kind of compensation to the civilian victims of a botched strike — a common practice when the U.S. military inadvertently kills civilians in wartime — American officials instead say … nothing.

Or worse, they make claims that the program is somehow perfect and never kills civilians as Obama’s then top counterterrorism adviser, John O. Brennan, improbably claimed of the drone program in June 2011 when he said that for almost a year, “there hasn’t been a single collateral death because of the exceptional proficiency, precision of the capabilities we’ve been able to develop.” Brennan is now the CIA director…

One idea to make the drone program as accountable as possible is to set up an internal U.S. government body that is independent of the CIA and Pentagon that would conduct reviews of the drone strikes after they have occurred.