It's kind of a puzzler, since the modern day establishment media generally does not tolerate dissent of any kind. Most likely it's just an aberration. A way for Salon to try to standout from the rest of the shitlib media by offering one lone article of skepticism in a mountain of bullshit they normally spew to see in order to try to retain some shred of credibility.

Biden's cluster munitions shenanigans is hard to square with shitlibs seeing themselves as morally superior and there's been some pushback, so this might have given them cover to run this. There's only so much cognitive dissonance you can engage in before you lose all credibility and at least a few shitlibs understand this. Plus the war seems to be going badly for the neocons/neolibs who have been standing there looking stupid after their hyped Ukrainian counter offensive turned into a total shitshow right off the bat, so eventually the media is going to have to come clean over all their stupid happy talk about the war.