(CNN) -- As the United States ended its combat mission in Iraq, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, America's biggest ally at the outset of the war, said the decision to invade Iraq was a necessary one.
Sanctions against Saddam Hussein were being "watered down," and if the former Iraqi dictator hadn't been removed, there would've been other consequences, Blair said on ABC's "This Week".
However, Blair, whose memoir "A Journey" was released last week, wasn't without some regrets.
"You can't not have regrets about the lives lost," Blair said. "I mean, you would be inhuman if you didn't regret the death of so many extraordinary, brave and committed soldiers, of civilians that have died in Iraq, or die still now in Afghanistan. And of course you feel an enormous responsibility for that, not just regret".
Blair said that at first he failed to grasp the reach of fundamentalist Islam and the security implications of it. He compared the movement to revolutionary communism.
"It's the religious or cultural equivalent of it, and its roots are deep, its tentacles are -- are long, and its narrative about
Islam stretches far further than we think into even parts of mainstream opinion, who abhor the extremism, but sort of buy some of the rhetoric that goes with it," he said.
CNN
