Tony Blair weighs in: 'Ground troops essential to defeat IS'

Blair warns that air strikes are not enough to defeat IS; sparks a new controversy for saying that Britain must be prepared to invade Iraq again.

16:39 22 September 2014

Former Prime Minister Tony Blair said that air strikes alone are not enough to defeat Islamic State extremists.

 

Speaking to the BBC, he said: "Unless you're prepared to fight these people on the ground, you may contain them but you won't defeat them."

 

He added: "The problem is not that we're facing a fringe of crazy people, a sort of weird cult confined to a few fanatics”

 

Commenting when told people would think he is the last person they would listen to, he said: "What I say is maybe having been through all of this, having faced these decisions in government and having faced the difficult choices in Iraq after 2003, and when the very type of terrorism that we're facing today we faced then, maybe it's worth appreciating the fact that there are lessons I have learnt from the experience of having gone through the process of taking these decisions, of having to deal with the situation in Iraq where, as I say, precisely the same type of terrorist forces we were facing in Iraq in 2006-07 is exactly what we face now in 2014."