TAPPER: And there was a New York Times story today by Jo Becker and Scott Shane about the way that President Obama conducts some of the counterterrorism operations. One of the things that I think was most interesting was the fact that one of the ways — one of the ways that the administration has been able to assert that there have been so few civilian casualties in any of these drone attacks is because the presumption is that if you are in these locations, you are guilty of terrorism and the — there’s almost a “guilty until proven innocent” quality.

I’m wondering how on earth the administration can square that with the president’s past language on human rights and avoiding civilian casualties?

CARNEY: I think your description of the policies is not quite exact. I would refer you to John Brennan’s speech not long ago on these matters in which he was very explicit and transparent about methods that are used in our counterterrorism operations and the care that is taken to avoid civilian casualties. We have at our disposal tools that make avoidance of civilian casualties much easier and tools that make precision targeting possible in ways that have never existed in the past. And I think that this administration’s commitment, this president’s commitment to, A, go after those who would do harm to the United States and do harm to our allies, is clear.