Distraction is a much better word than scapegoat and more along the lines of what I meant. As for GK - even if they hadn't read it, they had to have *heard* of it, though inter-service politics might make it so that they don't talk about those other things like the Navy and Marines and such.

Either way, if you don't know that Rolling Stone is a liberal leaning magazine and thus probably not in support of what your war is and is about, how did you manage to grow up in the United States? Also as a magazine article, they don't have the "news" requirement of being impartial (not that they are, but they're *supposed* to be), so they went into this with their eyes open.