A leading analyst says the blood of thousands of Americans and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis stain the soul of US Senator Dianne Feinstein, because she knew Iraq did not possess weapons of mass destruction and yet authorized the war.

Scott Ritter, a former UN weapons inspector and US intelligence officer made the remarks in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter, on Saturday, following Feinstein’s death.

Ritter said that he had met Senator Feinstein once, in the lead-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq when she had just been assigned to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.

He went on to say that at the time, a senior staffer from the committee asked him to come to Washington DC to brief Feinstein on the allegations being made by the administration of George W. Bush that Iraq continued to possess WMDs.

The analyst noted that he presented solid facts that Iraq has no such weapons, adding that he asked the senator to say if she had seen “unequivocal proof” that Iraq retained WMDs.  

“I have seen no such intelligence,” she replied, Ritter said. However, on October 11, 2002, Senator Feinstein voted in favor of the resolution authorizing war with Iraq.

The analyst further stated that Senator Feinstein later claimed that she had been “misled by the Bush administration and bad intelligence.”

“I will forever know Senator Feinstein as someone who had been empowered by the truth, and lacked the moral courage to act on it,” Ritter said.

“The blood of thousands of Americans and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis stains her soul. I hope when she stands in judgment before her maker, she is punished accordingly,” he added.

US Senator Dianne Feinstein of California died at age 90 on Thursday night at her home in Washington, D.C.

She was the oldest member of the Senate, where she had served since 1992. She held her seat in the chamber longer than any other woman and any other senator from California.

After two failed bids for mayor, she was elected president of San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors in 1978, becoming the first woman to hold the title. Feinstein was made acting mayor later that year.

In 2003, Feinstein voted in favor of the Iraq War, saying she believed at the time that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction.

She also supported US airstrikes in Syria in 2014, saying these strikes “are a critical part of the president’s comprehensive strategy to confront the Daesh Takfiri terrorist group and al-Qaeda affiliates in Syria.”