(VOVworld) - Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair has said the US-led invasion of Iraq was partly responsible for the emergence of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) in the Middle East. But he insisted that toppling the dictator Saddam Hussein had been the right thing to do. Blair told CNN that "there are elements of truth" in the assertion that the war caused the rise of IS. 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. Blair insisted that removing Saddam was the right thing to do, but apologized, as he has before, for failures in post-war planning.