After just a few hours, there's already enough material for The Top 10 GOP Complaints About...

...Abu Khattala's Capture




‘Good news … I guess’

After President Obama announced that the only remaining American prisoner of war in Afghanistan had been freed and was returning to the United States, I remember thinking that no one would dare complain about such good news. That, of course, didn’t turn out well.

But that was before. This afternoon, I thought there would simply be no way for even the most rabid partisan to complain about U.S. forces capturing Ahmed Abu Khattala, the suspected terrorist behind the 2012 Benghazi attack that left four Americans dead, as part of a mission in which there were no American casualties. Who’d be disappointed by this good news?

Even for right-wing conspiracy theorists, who tend to believe everything is “a distraction from Benghazi,” the usual talking point can’t apply here: this literally is Benghazi.

And yet, some folks apparently found a way.

To hear the right tell it, Special Operations forces, the FBI, and the White House all worked together to promote Hillary Clinton.

Right-wing political voices took to the airwaves and Internet on Tuesday to speculate about the timing of the arrest, following the news that one of the suspected ringleaders of the Benghazi terrorist attack had been arrested. Former Secretary of State Clinton has been hit hard for her role in the Benghazi attacks for years; she responded to critics in her new book, Hard Choices, which she’s currently promoting with a heavy media blitz. She’s scheduled to have two interviews tonight with Fox and CNN.

One Fox News host told viewers, “You have a former secretary of state who is in the middle of a high profile book tour, I think this is convenient for her to shift the talking points to some of the things she has been discussing.”

We talked last week about the notion that for much of the right, there is simply no such thing as uncontested good news. An American POW goes free? Complain that he didn’t deserve it. Unemployment rate drops? Complain that the White House has orchestrated a conspiracy to manipulate data. A strike takes out Osama bin Laden? Complain that Bush and Cheney aren’t getting enough credit.

U.S. forces capture a suspected terrorist believed to be responsible for the murder of four Americans? Complain about … whatever the right can think of.

Indeed, as the afternoon has progressed, the right’s potential talking points have begun to take shape – enough to create a Top 10 list.

1. This is about Clinton’s book tour. It’s hard to know how to respond to such obvious nonsense, but to believe that U.S. Special Forces, the FBI, and the White House hatched a military mission, months in the making, to help a former cabinet official on a book tour seems rather delusional.

2. This is about the IRS “controversy.” Apparently, capturing terrorists is now part of a plot to distract attention away from a story that evaporated a year ago?

3. Obama was golfing when the suspect was captured. I’m not sure if the claim is true, but if it is, I’m not sure why anyone should care. The president ordered the mission; American personnel on the ground carried out the mission. Why would anyone care about Obama’s physical location when the suspect was taken away?

More at: http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/good-news-i-guess

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