Can someone elaborate on how these decisions are made?
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indirect_fire for a typical decision making process.
The significant change here isn't that the distance is three orders of magnitude greater, or the required number of projectiles two orders of magnitude fewer. The sensor operator sees what he is doing and the effect. He is not in danger, he is not in a kill or be killed situation, but is called on to kill and observe the results. It is different psychological territory from where most combat soldiers operate.
The result of the explosion is the same, but the impact on the soldier is vastly different. In general, a standard healthy homo sapiens isn't really psychologically suited for killing others and handling it well, and thus most of the article is not about the killing but about living with your conscience afterwards.
"The president's underlings compile their proposed lists of who should be executed, and the president - at a charming weekly event dubbed by White House aides as "Terror Tuesday" - then chooses from "baseball cards" and decrees in total secrecy who should die. The power of accuser, prosecutor, judge, jury, and executioner are all consolidated in this one man, and those powers are exercised in the dark."
There is no longer even the pretence that the US and it's allies are the "good guys" (it was a shallow cover to start with..), now it's just the naked execution of power with an attached "what you going to do about it" to the rest of the world.
It would be war crimes if we where at sodding war.