For many Republicans the word “Benghazi” is no longer about an event in Libya, not about the tragic deaths of four patriotic Americans and not about the inability to save those lives. Benghazi is about something dark and sinister, something about the closeness of treason and the search for that one thing, that one truly evil act that surely must lie somewhere between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.

The act must be, like a ticking clock attached to a terrorist bomb, lying latent, hidden, but nonetheless just beyond all the facts of eight investigations into the events of Benghazi.

The investigations have all reached virtually identical conclusions, that there was inadequate security present in Benghazi that day to protect and save the lives of Ambassador Chris Stevens and the three other Americans who died in the U.S. Consulate that day.

Yet Republicans sense something a great deal more wrong will eventually define Benghazi, something clearly the responsibility of Clinton and Obama.

But what can that “something” be? It cannot be that either the Secretary of State or the President were personally or directly responsible for security at Benghazi that day, any more they the two were in charge of the light bills at the Embassy in Tripoli. Nor can the “something” be that Hillary did not call for an airstrike, for that would have been a military decision (and there was no military solution available at that time).

The “something” needs to be that somehow, in some way, the deaths of those four Americans was the direct fault of Obama or Clinton, for nothing else will suffice to be the horror of Benghazi promoted for over two years by Fox TV as though their false claims were ever validated as truth.

A year ago in May the current congressional investigation was chartered with Representative Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) chairing the committee. The committee has made slow progress with little to show for its efforts beyond exposing that Secretary Clinton’s private emails are now being “leaked” drip by drip to the media from sources unidentified within the committee.

And now, compliments of soon to be Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy, we discover the single obvious truth of the Republican Select Committee investigation of Benghazi to destroy Hillary Clinton’s presidential ambitions.

It is time to reflect that the purpose of this ninth committee to “investigate” Benghazi was never designed to identify new information about the events of Sept. 11, 2012, in Benghazi, given the previous investigations had already used up all the good facts.

There is also evidence that this investigation has absolutely no intention to produce any evidence discovered that supports the statements made by the secretary in her previous appearances before congressional committees or her responses provided earlier congressional committees. Representative Elijah (D-MD) ranking minority member on the committee, has suggested that Republicans on the committee, meeting with witnesses alone, have discarded information that rebutted claims that were damaging to the secretary.

The only success of the Gowdy committee to date, and the only goal of this committee, has been doing political damage to the candidacy of Hillary Clinton by the steady drip, drip, dripping of leaked emails to the media. This strategy has, in the minds of many Republicans, made representative Gowdy an internal conservative hero.

But for taxpayers already sick of our Congress doing nothing to help the nation and everything to play politics with our money, the Select committee has spent more than $4 million on a strictly partisan campaign to hurt a democratic candidate for president.

There is no path forward for this shameful use of taxpayer dollars other than to immediately shut down this committee. Its supporters should share to anger of voters to stop the games and go to work for the American people.

As for the four who died in Benghazi, they became casualties of Republican policies before they were brought back home to be interred by their families and loved ones.