Tony Blair: 'We didn't cause Iraq crisis' --- The 2003 invasion of Iraq is not to blame for the violent insurgency now gripping the country, former UK prime minister Tony Blair has said. -- Writing on his website, he said the violence was the "predictable and malign effect" of inaction in Syria. -- "We have to liberate ourselves from the notion that 'we' have caused this," he wrote. "We haven't." -- He said the idea that the current crisis was a result of the toppling of Saddam Hussein in 2003 was "bizarre". -- Mr Blair said the takeover of Mosul by Sunni insurgents was planned across the Syrian border. -- Syria is three years into a civil war in which tens of thousands of people have died and millions more have been displaced. -- In August last year, a chemical attack near the capital Damascus killed hundreds of people. -- In August, UK MPs rejected the idea of air strikes against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's government to deter the use of chemical weapons. -- "But every time we put off action," Mr Blair wrote, "The action we will be forced to take will be ultimately greater." --- Mr Blair said: "I understand all the reasons following Afghanistan and Iraq why public opinion was so hostile to involvement. -- He said action in Syria "did not and need not be as in those military engagements". -- "Where the extremists are fighting, they have to be countered hard, with force," he said. -- "This does not mean Western troops as in Iraq. -- "There are masses of responses we can make short of that. -- "But they need to know that wherever they're engaged in terror, we will be hitting them." -- The Sunni insurgents, from the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIS), regard Iraq's Shia majority as "infidels". -- After taking Mosul late on Monday, and then Saddam Hussein's hometown of Tikrit, the Sunni militants have pressed south into the ethnically divided Diyala province. -- On Friday, they battled against Shia fighters near Muqdadiya - just 50 miles (80km) from Baghdad's city limits. -- Reinforcements from both the Iraqi army and Shia militias have arrived in the city of Samarra, where fighters loyal to ISIS are trying to enter from the north. -- Mr Blair said US President Barack Obama was "right to put all options on the table in respect of Iraq, including military strikes on the extremists". -- He said the "choices are all pretty ugly, it's true". - More, BBC, http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-27852832