One of the wonderful things to see during Iraq has been the accession of Prime Minister Blair of Britain as a war leader beside our own president, and it was memorably on display yesterday, when the British leader appeared at the White House to stand with Mr. Bush at what the prime minister called a “difficult moment.” Mr. Blair’s decision to appear with Mr. Bush, our Nicholas Wapshott writes on page one today, was intended as a signal that, even as he himself is in the closing months of his own leadership, he has no intention of backing a quick withdrawal of troops from Iraq or an imminent summit with the Iranians and Syrians, whatever the Baker commission recommended. His presence seemed to embolden Mr. Bush in putting the Baker commission’s report into perspective.

“A lot of reports in Washington are never read by anybody,” Mr. Bush said. “To show you how important this one is, I read it.” But he went on, as Mr. Wapshott points out, to diminish expectations of retreat or compromise. He and the prime minister, Mr. Bush said, “agree that victory in Iraq is important; it’s important for the Iraqi people, it’s important for the security of the United States and Great Britain, and it’s important for the civilized world.” It was lost on no one that the presence of Mr. Blair on the 65th anniversary of Pearl Harbor was designed to evoke what Mr. Wapshott calls “a suitable sense of moment.”

The task before our two countries may be “daunting,” Mr. Blair said. “Yet our nations have stood before in difficult moments. Sixty-five years ago this day, America was jolted out of our isolationism and plunged into a global war that Britain had been fighting for two years. In that war, our nation stood firm,” Mr. Bush said. The president made a point of noting that Congress “isn’t going to accept every recommendation in the report, and neither will the administration.” Mr. Blair announced that retreat would mean that “you leave a Middle East in which the Israel-Palestine issue is not solved, in which there’s no moves towards democracy, in which Iraq goes back in its old state, in which the Iranian people have no chance to express themselves.” Well put all around.