In recent months, Prime Minister Nouri Kamal al-Maliki has sought to convince Iraq that it is finished with war. He ordered blast walls around Baghdad pulled down, including those near the Foreign and Finance Ministries. He has refused to ask the American military for help in any major way since Iraqi soldiers took full security responsibility in the cities on June 30.

Then two trucks drove into downtown Baghdad on Wednesday, detonating huge bombs that killed nearly 100 people and that gravely wounded Maliki’s case that Iraq is ready to defend itself without American help. The attacks also deepened a widespread dissatisfaction with Maliki, with some critics accusing him of polishing his political image as the man who restored security to Iraq at the expense of actual safety.

“The removal of the T-walls from the streets was just a propaganda way to say to Iraqis, ‘We have improved the situation,’ and it was just rubbish,” said Qassim Daoud, an independent Shiite politician.

Among the troubling questions to emerge from the heaps of rubble piled up from the blasts is how the Maliki government ultimately asked the Americans for help on Wednesday, apparently for the first time since the June 30 transfer. Under the countries’ security agreement, US forces must stay out of Iraqi cities unless officially asked to return.

The request on Wednesday did not appear to have come until more than three hours after the explosions. By that time, most of the dying was done. Hospitals filled to overflowing with more than 1,000 wounded people, but only a trickle of the victims went to the American military-run Ibn Sina Hospital in the Green Zone just three minutes away.

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