Dear Commons Community,

The Associated Press is reporting that former British Prime Minister Tony Blair has said the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq was partly responsible for the emergence of the Islamic State militant group in the Middle East. A reported by the AP:

“Blair told CNN that “there are elements of truth” in the assertion that the war caused the rise of IS.

“Of course you can’t say those of us who removed Saddam in 2003 bear no responsibility for the situation in 2015.”

He added that the Arab Spring had also played a role in creating instability that allowed the Islamic fundamentalist militant group to flourish.

Blair’s decision to take Britain into the Iraq war — based on what turned out to be false claims about Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction — remains hugely divisive, and contributed to his Labour Party’s loss of power in 2010.

Blair insisted that removing Saddam was the right thing to do, but apologized, as he has before, for failures in post-war planning.

“I apologize for the fact that the intelligence we received was wrong,” he said in clips released before the broadcast.

“I also apologize for some of the mistakes in planning and, certainly, our mistake in our understanding of what would happen once you removed the regime.”

Can we hear from George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld?

Tony