Veterans for Common Sense

A leading Republican senator and prospective presidential candidate said Sunday that the war in Iraq has destabilized the Middle East and is looking more like the Vietnam conflict from a generation ago.

Nebraska Sen. Chuck Hagel, who received two Purple Hearts and other military honors for his service in Vietnam, reiterated his position that the United States needs to develop a strategy to leave Iraq. Hagel scoffed at the idea that U.S. troops could be in Iraq four years from now at levels above 100,000, a contingency for which the Pentagon is preparing.

”We should start figuring out how we get out of there,” Hagel said on ”This Week” on ABC. ”But with this understanding, we cannot leave a vacuum that further destabilizes the Middle East. I think our involvement there has destabilized the Middle East. And the longer we stay there, I think the further destabilization will occur.”

Hagel said ”stay the course” is not a policy. ”By any standard, when you analyze 2 1/2 years in Iraq … we’re not winning,” he said.

President Bush was preparing for separate speeches this week to reaffirm his plan to help Iraq train its security forces while its leaders build a democratic government. In his weekly Saturday radio address, Bush said the fighting there protected Americans at home.

Polls show the public growing more skeptical about Bush’s handling of the war.

In Iraq, officials continued to craft a new constitution in the face of a Monday night deadline for parliamentary approval. They missed the initial deadline last week.

Other Republican senators appearing on Sunday news shows advocated remaining in Iraq until the mission set by Bush is completed, but they also noted that the public is becoming more and more concerned and needs to be reassured.

Sen. George Allen, R-Va., another possible candidate for president in 2008, disagreed that the U.S. is losing in Iraq. He said a constitution guaranteeing basic freedoms would provide a rallying point for Iraqis.

”I think this is a very crucial time for the future of Iraq,” said Allen, also on ABC. ”The terrorists don’t have anything to win the hearts and minds of the people of Iraq. All they care to do is disrupt.”

Hagel, who was among those who advocated sending two to three times as many troops to Iraq when the war began in March 2003, said a stronger military presence by the U.S. is not the solution today.

”We’re past that stage now because now we are locked into a bogged-down problem not unsimilar, dissimilar to where we were in Vietnam,” Hagel said. ”The longer we stay, the more problems we’re going to have.”

Allen said that unlike the communist-guided North Vietnamese who fought the U.S., the insurgents in Iraq have no guiding political philosophy or organization. Still, Hagel argued, the similarities are growing.

”What I think the White House does not yet understand — and some of my colleagues — the dam has broke on this policy,” Hagel said. ”The longer we stay there, the more similarities (to Vietnam) are going to come together.”

The Army’s top general, Gen. Peter Schoomaker, said Saturday in an interview with The Associated Press that the Army is planning for the possibility of keeping the current number of soldiers in Iraq — well over 100,000 — for four more years as part of preparations for a worst-case scenario.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican, said U.S. security is tied to success in Iraq, and he counseled people to be patient.

”The worst-case scenario is not staying four years. The worst-case scenario is leaving a dysfunctional, repressive government behind that becomes part of the problem in the war on terror and not the solution,” Graham said on ”Fox News Sunday.

Allen said the military would be strained at such levels in four years yet could handle that difficult assignment. Hagel described the Army contingency plan as ”complete folly.”

”I don’t know where he’s going to get these troops,” Hagel said. ”There won’t be any National Guard left … no Army Reserve left … there is no way America is going to have 100,000 troops in Iraq, nor should it, in four years.”

Hagel added: ”It would bog us down, it would further destabilize the Middle East, it would give Iran more influence, it would hurt Israel, it would put our allies over there in Saudi Arabia and Jordan in a terrible position. It won’t be four years. We need to be out.”

Sen. Trent Lott, R-Miss., said the U.S. is winning in Iraq but has ”a way to go” before it meets its goals there. Meanwhile, more needs to be done to lay out the strategy, Lott said on NBC’s ”Meet the Press.”

”I do think we, the president, all of us need to do a better job, do more,” Lott said, by telling people ”why we have made this commitment, what is being done now, what we do expect in the process and, yes, why it’s going to take more time.”

The Trillion-Dollar War

by Linda Bilmes, Harvard University, Saturday, August 20, 2005

The human cost of the more than 2,000 American military personnel killed and 14,500 wounded so far in Iraq and Afghanistan is all too apparent. But the financial toll is still largely hidden from public view and, like the suffering of those who have lost loved ones, will persist long after the fighting is over.

The cost goes well beyond the more than $250 billion already spent on military operations and reconstruction. Basic running costs of the current conflicts are $6 billion a month – a figure that reflects the Pentagon’s unprecedented reliance on expensive private contractors. Other factors keeping costs high include inducements for recruits and for military personnel serving second and third deployments, extra pay for reservists and members of the National Guard, as well as more than $2 billion a year in additional foreign aid to Jordan, Pakistan, Turkey and others to reward their cooperation in Iraq and Afghanistan. The bill for repairing and replacing military hardware is $20 billion a year, according to figures from the Congressional Budget Office.

But the biggest long-term costs are disability and health payments for returning troops, which will be incurred even if hostilities were to stop tomorrow. The United States currently pays more than $2 billion in disability claims per year for 159,000 veterans of the 1991 gulf war, even though that conflict lasted only five weeks, with 148 dead and 467 wounded. Even assuming that the 525,000 American troops who have so far served in Iraq and Afghanistan will require treatment only on the same scale as their predecessors from the gulf war, these payments are likely to run at $7 billion a year for the next 45 years.

All of this spending will need to be financed by adding to the federal debt. Extra interest payments will total $200 billion or more even if the borrowing is repaid quickly. Conflict in the Middle East has also played a part in doubling the price of oil from $30 a barrel just prior to the invasion of Iraq in March 2003 to $60 a barrel today. Each $5 increase in the price of oil reduces our national income by about $17 billion a year.

Even by this simple yardstick, if the American military presence in the region lasts another five years, the total outlay for the war could stretch to more than $1.3 trillion, or $11,300 for every household in the United States.

Linda Bilmes, an assistant secretary at the Department of Commerce from 1999 to 2001, teaches budgeting and public finance at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard.

Salt Lake City Mayor Calls for Protest Against Bush Speech to VFW

Rocky’s call to protest Bush makes vets see red; Mayor’s e-mail: ‘Nothing radical,’ supporters say

By Glen Warchol
The Salt Lake Tribune
Salt Lake Tribune

Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky Anderson called for “the biggest demonstration this state has ever seen” to protest President Bush’s appearance Monday before a national veterans convention.

“This administration has been disastrous to the country,” Anderson said Friday. “If people could organize and speak out in an effective manner from the reddest state in the country, that would garner a lot of attention.”

In an e-mail Wednesday to about 10 activist leaders, the maverick mayor of Utah’s capital called for a diverse demonstration to greet Bush when he speaks to the Veterans of Foreign Wars at the Salt Palace Convention Center. The mayor plans to join the protesters.

“There should be a collaboration of health-care-provision advocates, seniors, the [gay, lesbian and bisexual and transsexual] community, anti-Patriot Act advocates and other civil libertarians, anti-war folks, pro-Social Security advocates, environmental advocates, anti-nuclear-testing advocates, and anti-nuclear-waste-shipment-and-storage advocates,” the mayor wrote in the e-mail.

The mayor’s message drew a howl of outrage from Mike Parkin, senior vice commander of Veterans of Foreign Wars Atomic Post 4355 in Salt Lake City.

”Excuse my French, but – that son of a bitch!” he said. “It makes the mayor look very, very unpatriotic. It makes him look despicable.”

Parkin said such demonstrations, particularly against the Iraq war, give comfort to America’s enemies and will be particularly offensive to the 13,000 to 14,000 veterans gathering at the convention.

“I voted for the son of a bitch and I’ll never vote for him again,” said the Vietnam War veteran.

Anderson disagrees with that measure of patriotism.

“Patriotism,” the mayor said, “demands that people speak out when we see our government officials acting in such anti-democratic and deceitful ways to the people of our country.”

He also said: “I don’t understand people simply blindly going along with the sort of deceit and utter cruelty of this administration. It’s not just we have the right to speak out, but we have the obligation to speak out when we see misconduct on the part of the government. The most patriotic thing we can do is stand up against the misuse of governmental power.”

Craig Axford, co-chairman of the Utah Democratic Progressive Caucus, said Anderson’s encouragement of demonstrations is appropriate.

“I don’t think there’s anything untoward or radical about that,” said Axford, an organizer of a peace rally planned for Pioneer Park, three blocks from the convention center. “For people who appreciate the mayor and appreciate his politics, obviously it will boost our event.”

But Joe Cannon, chairman of the Utah Republican Party, said Anderson’s encouragement of protests against the president was improper, though typical of the mayor.

“What do you expect? It’s Rocky. Clearly it’s intended to smack the president. As the mayor of the host city, it’s at best untoward.”

Cannon thinks the e-mail will only help the Utah Republican Party.

“It’s not the worst thing that can happen to remind the people of Utah the kind of things Democrats nationally stand for.”

Salt Lake City Councilman Dave Buhler, a Republican, also said the mayor’s action was in poor taste.

”I’m disappointed he would do this and use his office to promote his political views, which do not involve the city directly.”

Other city officials can do little, Buhler said, except “apologize for him again, as we are getting pretty good at doing.”

Anderson, who is scheduled to make welcoming remarks to the conventioneers, says veterans will understand. “The veterans of foreign wars are heroes in my view. To stand up against government misconduct is in no way expressing a lack of support for those who defend our country.”

Even though Utah gave Bush his largest margin of victory of any state in the 2000 and 2004 elections, Anderson, a Democrat, wrote in this e-mail: “Don’t let him come to Utah and not see huge opposition, even in the reddest state! This would send such an important message.”

“A tepid response will just send a message of apathy and resignation. Let the Bush administration – and the world – hear from Salt Lake City!”  Meanwhile, peace activists already were gearing up for the president’s visit. Erin Davis, a veteran who opposes the war in Iraq, predicted at least 1,000 anti-war activists would begin gathering in Pioneer Park early Monday. The demonstration will be joined by a national group of military families who oppose the war.

Anderson plans to participate at Pioneer Park demonstration against the war and is scheduled to speak.

Axford described the rally at Pioneer Park, from 11:30 a.m. to 2 p.m., as a “pro-peace rally.” It isn’t being held near the Salt Palace, where the president will speak, because organizers didn’t want to make the convention attendees feel unwelcome, the mayor said.

“We didn’t want to invite any kind of confrontation. We wanted to focus on our positive message.”

That message, Axford says, is: “We’d just like [the president] to explain and justify this war in light of the fact so much of what we were told we were fighting for clearly we weren’t fighting for.”

On a high-profile and bi-partisan fact-finding tour in Alaska and Canada’s Yukon territory, Senators John McCain, a Republican, and Hillary Clinton, the Democratic senator for New York, were confronted by melting permafrost and shrinking glaciers and heard from native Inuit that rising sea levels were altering their lives.

“The question is how much damage will be done before we start taking concrete action,” Mr McCain said at a press conference in Anchorage. “Go up to places like we just came from. It’s a little scary.” Mrs Clinton added: “I don’t think there’s any doubt left for anybody who actually looks at the science. There are still some holdouts, but they’re fighting a losing battle. The science is overwhelming.”

Their findings directly challenge President George Bush’s reluctance to legislate to reduce America’s carbon emissions. Although both senators havetalked before of the need to tackle global warming, this week’s clarion call was perhaps the clearest and most urgent. It also raises the prospect that climate change and other environmental issues could be a factor in the presidential contest in 2008 if Mrs Clinton and Mr McCain enter it. Mrs Clinton and Mr McCain, who represents Arizona, are among the leading, and the most popular, likely contenders.

That they chose Alaska as the stage from which to force global warming on to the American political agenda was not a matter of chance. In many ways, this separated US state is the frontline in the global warming debate. Environmentalists say the signs of climate change are more obvious there than perhaps anywhere else in the US.

Dan Lashof, a scientist with the Natural Resources Defence Council, a respected Washington-based group, told The Independent: “People in Alaska are starting to freak out. The retreat of the sea ice allows the oceans to pound the coast more, and villages there are suffering from the effects of that erosion. There is permafrost melting, roads are buckling, there are forests that have been infested with beetles because of a rise in temperatures. I think residents there feel it’s visible more and more, more than any other place in the country.”

President Bush’s administration has repeatedly questioned the evidence of global warming and the contribution of human activity to any shift. Mr Bush, who in 2001 refused to ratify the Kyoto treaty on global warming weeks after he took office, has repeatedly been accused of doing nothing to enforce tighter controls on emissions of carbon dioxide and other “greenhouse gases”. But this summer, the US National Academy of Sciences – and the scientific academies of the other G8 nations as well as Brazil, China and India – issued a statement saying there was strong evidence that significant global warming was happening and that “it is likely that most of the warming in recent decades can be attributed to human activities”. They called on world leaders to recognise “that delayed action will increase the risk of adverse environmental effects and will likely incur a greater cost”. Mrs Clinton, who must first win her re-election to the US senate next year if she is to enter the 2008 White House race, said at the press conference that she had spoken to scientists as well as native Alaskans during the trip.

She said that, flying over the Yukon, she saw forests devastated by spruce bark beetles, believed to be increasing at an unprecedented rate because of warmer weather. She also talked of what a 93-year-old woman at a fish camp at Whitehorse told her. The woman said she had been fishing there all her life but now fish have strange bumps on them.

“It’s heartbreaking to see the devastation,” Mrs Clinton said. Mr McCain, Mrs Clinton and Senators Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Susan Collins of Maine, also went to Barrow, the northernmost city in the US. There, they spoke to scientists and Inupiaq Inuit. They also saw shrinking glaciers in Kenai Fjords National Park.

Mr McCain – with Senator Joe Lieberman – is behind proposed legislation that would require power-generating companies to reduce carbon emissions to their 2000 levels. Mr Graham, a Republican, said he had been moved by what he had seen. “Climate change is different when you come here, because you see the faces of people experiencing it. If you go to the people and listen to their stories and walk away with any doubt that something’s going on, you’re not listening.”

Mrs Collins, a Democrat, was even more convinced. She said the evidence in Alaska represented the “canary in the mine shaft of global warming crying out to us to pay attention”.

In two shootings by Iraq vets, war stress blamed

By Angie Wagner and Denise Lavoie, Associated Press Writers  |  August 20, 2005

One was a skinny 20-year-old discharged from the Army who couldn’t shake the piercing rat-a-tat-tat reminders of combat. The other, a decorated Marine family man whose job preparing bodies of U.S. soldiers for burial had caused clammy, restless nights.

Both home from duty in Iraq, they were on opposite ends of the country, but their stories have much in common.

In Las Vegas, Matthew Sepi was on his way to get a beer, but he tucked an assault rifle inside his black trenchcoat just in case. In Lawrence, Mass., Daniel Cotnoir brought out his 12-gauge shotgun. Both pulled the trigger. Now Sepi faces murder and attempted murder charges while Cotnoir is charged with attempted murder.

In the otherwise unrelated cases, family, friends and even law officers are looking to the influence of wartime horrors on the two veterans.

Flashbacks, nightmares, a struggle to reconnect to an old life — these are all signs of post-traumatic stress disorder that many soldiers suffer from. The Army’s surgeon general has said 30 percent of U.S. troops surveyed have developed stress-related mental health problems just months after returning home. A New England Journal of Medicine study found almost 1 in 6 soldiers showing symptoms of mental stress.

Sepi and Cotnoir both reportedly sought help. Some question whether the military is doing enough to aid soldiers.

Just 5-feet-3 and 120 pounds, Matthew Sepi was small but tough and disciplined, a great soldier, his old Army roommate said.

After joining the Army in May 2002, Sepi, a Navajo Indian, left for Iraq in April the following year. Along with his company from Fort Carson, Colo., the specialist was on the front lines, going on missions and raids and doing traffic control.

“Every day you’re trying to dodge `winning the lottery,'” said former Army Spc. Shay Price, Sepi’s roommate at Fort Carson. “It wasn’t a constant battle every day, but you know, it’s like a terrorist war. It’s very tactical out there. There’s no army to fight.”

If the grinding war bothered Sepi, he didn’t let on. He seemed fine and never mentioned any problems to his colleagues. But that was Sepi’s way. He kept his feelings to himself.

“I was with him every day,” said former Army Pfc. Justin Nelson, Sepi’s “battle buddy.” “Being with someone that long you never notice a slow, progressive change. You never know if they’re changing or not.”

When he was honorably discharged in May, Sepi eventually moved to Las Vegas and struggled to find a job. He worked as a day laborer, but told police that when a pallet fell to the ground, he was so bothered by it he could not function for an hour.

“He was nervous,” his sister Juli Sepi said from her Winslow, Ariz., home. “If there were loud noises he would definitely look around and make sure every area was secure. When I was with him, I slammed a door and he kind of was freaking out.”

His mother reportedly said her son sought counseling, but was put on a waiting list, though that could not be confirmed.

Sepi talked to his sister about the rundown neighborhood he lived in, how people would eye him in the alley by his apartment complex.

“He just didn’t feel safe,” she said.

On July 31, just after 1 a.m., with the temperature near 90 degrees, Sepi picked up his trenchcoat and assault rifle and made his way down the alley to a convenience store. A man and a woman said something to him, but he doesn’t remember what, Sepi told police. After drinking a beer, he walked back through the alley and saw the same couple.

They yelled for him to get out of the alley, he told police. What happened next is unclear, but Sepi claims the man fired a gun at him, so he pulled out his rifle and started shooting. In an ambush, that’s what he was trained to do, he said.

The woman, 47-year-old Sharon Jackson, was shot dead; 26-year-old Kevin Ratcliff was injured.

“Who did I take fire from?” Sepi asked a detective.

Police found a 9 mm pistol and three bullet casings in the alley, which they believe belonged to Jackson or Ratcliff. They haven’t said who they think fired first; Ratcliff has also said he fired in self-defense.

When police caught up to him, Sepi had gone back to his apartment for more ammunition, and loaded it and his rifle into his car.

“You walk around with a weapon in your hand every day, you get kind of accustomed to it,” Price said.

Two weeks after the Las Vegas alley shooting, in another place far removed from Iraq, another veteran snapped.

Daniel Cotnoir was just a boy of 5 or 6 when he began working in his father’s funeral home, at first dusting chairs in the sitting rooms, then learning how to embalm and eventually mastering restorative techniques.

He joined the Marines later than most. He was 27 when he enlisted, after his wife asked if there was anything he wished he’d done in his life. But Cotnoir quickly excelled, and the younger Marines looked up to him.

“He was very proud to be associated with the other veterans, with the other servicemen and women,” said Ben Ivone, a friend who met Cotnoir at bootcamp. “He was just very proud to be called a Marine.”

When he shipped off to serve in Iraq, his commanders decided to put Cotnoir’s mortuary skills to use.

He helped recover the remains of soldiers blown up by roadside bombs. He picked up body parts from battlefields and trained other Marines to do the same. He even helped cut down the burned bodies of civilian contractors hanging from a bridge in Fallujah — a scene that horrified the world.

When Cotnoir returned home last October to Lawrence, he went back to working in the funeral home and back to his wife and two daughters. Friends said he seemed a little quieter, but still the same nice guy who helped them plow their driveways and handed out toys at Christmastime to needy children.

He was even named “Marine of the Year” by the Marine Corps Times, a national award.

That was the surface. Cotnoir told longtime friend Shaun Hamilton he suffered from nightmares, shakes and cold sweats.

Sometimes in traffic, he looked at other drivers suspiciously.

“I just get a little jittery, a little nervous,” Cotnoir told The Boston Globe in November. “I try to take deep breaths and let it go and remember this is Lawrence. Car bombs don’t go off here.”

Then, just before 3 a.m. on Aug. 13, Cotnoir pointed a 12-gauge shotgun out his second-floor window and fired a single shot into a crowd of noisy revelers leaving a nightclub and a nearby restaurant. Witnesses said someone had thrown a bottle through Cotnoir’s window, shattering the glass, before Cotnoir fired.

Cotnoir, 33, known as a hard-working, straight-laced family man, told police he was afraid for his wife and two daughters, who were asleep in the house. He had complained repeatedly for six years about the noise from the weekend crowds. Last year, a shooting left three bullet holes in the side of his house.

Cotnoir’s lawyer said he meant the shot to be a warning to the crowd, but fragments from the blast ricocheted off concrete and struck Lissette Cumba, 15, and Kelvin Castillo, 20. Both have been released from the hospital.

Now Cotnoir’s friends and fellow Marines are rallying around him, calling the shooting an obvious case of post-traumatic stress disorder.

“He was the person who went out and picked up the soldiers who got blown up,” said Bruce Reynolds, a friend who runs an auto repair shop next to Cotnoir’s funeral home. “I have sympathy for him.”

Cotnoir sought psychological counseling at a nearby veterans hospital, according to his lawyer, Robert Kelley.

Citing cases like those of Sepi and Cotnoir, along with numerous suicides and a bank robbery by Iraq veterans, some believe they need more help.

U.S. Rep. Martin Meehan, D-Mass., has filed legislation that would require every returning veteran to undergo a thorough psychological and physical examination. Meehan also seeks to increase funding for treatment of veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder.

“If you look at how much money we’re spending in Iraq and the increase in the defense budget, surely a small portion of that could be used to take care of these kids coming back from Iraq,” Meehan said.

Part of the reason for the mental stress when soldiers return could be the nature of this war, in which U.S. troops aren’t fighting an army. Soldiers never know whether a civilian is the enemy. Troops rotate in and out of Iraq and return home to a country less accepting of the war.

“It’s one thing to hunker down in one area, but it’s another to move around to a new unsecured area all the time,” said staff Sgt. Robert Davis, a mental health technician with the Army’s 883rd Combat Stress Control Company, a unit that offers psychological counseling to troops on the front lines in Iraq.

“There’s anxiety, battle fatigue, lack of sleep and they’re miles from home. Any of those is difficult, but all of them together is bad,” Davis said.

David Spiegel, a psychiatrist at Stanford University and expert in PTSD, said soldiers are immersed in a brutal environment, then just dumped back home among people who don’t understand.

“You have a society not prepared to deal with what these people have been through and done. It isolates them when they come back.”

Many are reluctant to seek help. Veterans worry that getting counseling could hurt their careers or alter relationships, said a study last year in the New England Journal of Medicine by the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research.

“A lot of the younger guys won’t do that,” said National Guard Staff Sgt. Joseph Nelson of Bloomingdale, N.Y. “They think it makes them into wimps.”

Nelson, who served in Iraq from February 2004 until last December after he was injured, suffers from PTSD and sees a psychologist once a week even though he’s leery of what people think of him.

“People see me coming out of the shrink’s office and say, ‘What’s wrong with him?’ I think about it. What would they say? What’s going through their minds?”

Even Cotnoir had talked about the stigma attached to asking for help.

“A lot of guys don’t want to ‘fess up to needing help because they want to get back to civilian life,” he told The (Lawrence) Eagle-Tribune newspaper in November, about a month after he returned home.

“Of course, you don’t want to be labeled. You don’t want to be that guy under a bridge talking to a rock … because you’ve seen it in the Vietnam era. And you don’t want to be that guy walking around in a flak jacket.”

Even one of the victims is supporting Cotnoir.

“We both think he needs help, not jail,” Cumba’s mother, Naida Cumba, told The Eagle-Tribune.

Sepi’s friend Price agreed: “Maybe the system, maybe they need to get on the ball a little faster.”

Cotnoir is undergoing a psychiatric evaluation at a state hospital awaiting a Sept. 2 Lawrence District Court appearance. Sepi is in the Clark County, Nev., jail, awaiting an Aug. 26 Justice Court appearance, though prosecutors say they are looking at getting him into counseling.

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EDITOR’S NOTE — Angie Wagner, AP’s Western regional writer, reported from Las Vegas. AP writer Denise Lavoie, who specializes in legal affairs coverage, reported from Lawrence, Mass.

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On the Net:

http://www.ncptsd.va.gov/ 

Continued violence claimed the lives of four American soldiers today, the military said.

They were killed when a roadside bomb exploded in the northern city of Samarra this morning. No other details were made available.

Today’s violence follows a deadly day in which three car bombs exploded in quick succession in and around a crowded bus station in Baghdad, killing at least 43 people, wounding 88 and paralyzing one of Iraq’s most important transportation networks.

The assault, the deadliest in a month, took place at the height of morning rush hour Wednesday at Iraq’s equivalent of the Port Authority bus terminal in Manhattan.

It appeared to be aimed at Shiite Arabs boarding buses and shared taxis bound for cities in the south, and further inflamed sectarian tensions. The attack also underscored the Sunni-led insurgency’s ability to strike, seemingly with ease, at some of the most important infrastructure.

The bombings coincided with the formal resumption of negotiations over the new constitution, which is now due by Monday, after the Parliament voted for a one-week extension of the deadline. The three major ethnic and sectarian groups in Iraq – the Sunni Arabs, Shiite Arabs and Kurds – remain deadlocked on fundamental issues that will shape the future, particularly the right to carve out autonomous regions. The Bush administration is putting enormous pressure on Iraqi leaders to complete a draft this week.

The explosions on Wednesday began at 7:50 a.m., sending body parts and debris flying across the Nahda bus terminal in central Baghdad. Horrified survivors rushed in a wailing frenzy from the vast open-air lot. The Iraqi police quickly shut down the area and began moving through the charred hulks of buses, sifting through items that included a baby’s milk bottle and bloody tatters of clothing.

“There were a lot of bodies, a lot of smoke,” said Faraj Lilo Anad, 37, the police officer in charge of security at the terminal. “When the explosion happened, I could feel myself flying. Then I landed on the ground. I said, ‘Thank God I’m still alive.’ ”

By noon, the morgue of a nearby hospital was overflowing with bodies, and new ones had to be stacked outside in the 120-degree heat.

Because air travel is limited and expensive, many Iraqis use public buses to move around the country. Until now, there have been few attacks on the network, even though terrorists in Israel and Britain have carried out bus bombings. The buses at Nahda go to cities in the Kurdish north and Shiite-dominated south, while buses running to western Iraq, the heartland of the Sunni Arab insurgency, depart from a different station.

The first bomb was packed into a car that had been parked in the corner of the station where many Shiites congregate to catch buses south, Mr. Anad said. The second car bomb exploded 10 minutes later right outside the terminal, as police and emergency workers were rushing to the scene. The third car bomb detonated at 8:45 a.m. by Al Kindi Hospital, where many of the victims from the first attacks were being taken, said the United States Army’s Third Infantry Division, which is charged with controlling Baghdad.

“When the first bombing happened, other cars here started exploding one by one,” said Amar Thajil Mansour, 23, a worker in a clothing store outside the station. “There was yelling and crying from women and children running to safety. Most of the people here are Shiites. They’re trying to kill Shiites.”

A poster of Moktada al-Sadr, the radical Shiite cleric, hung in the devastated corner of the bus station, near where the owner of a falafel stand had been shredded by flying shrapnel.

The coordinated attack killed more people than any since July 16, when a suicide bomber blew up a fuel truck next to a Shiite mosque in Musayyib, 40 miles south of Baghdad. That incident ignited outrage among many Shiites and even prompted a rare denunciation from Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the most revered Shiite cleric in Iraq. A senior Shiite politician said at the time that the ayatollah had urged the government to take steps to prevent “mass annihilation.”

Violence flared Wednesday elsewhere in Iraq.

Insurgents killed six Iraqi soldiers driving to Kirkuk, in the north, a police official said. The soldiers were returning from a training camp and had been assigned to protect an oil pipeline that is frequently attacked.

The American military said one of its soldiers was killed Tuesday by a roadside bomb in southwest Baghdad, and another was killed Monday in a drive-by shooting in Mosul, in the north.

The military also said some Iraqi civilians were killed or injured when American forces attacked suspected insurgents from the air in Baghdad early Tuesday. In the battle, American helicopters “tracked and engaged the terrorists,” the military said in a statement, and an investigation is under way.

The office of President Jalal Talabani announced Wednesday that Mr. Talabani had authorized one of his vice presidents, Adel Abdul Mehdi, to approve the death sentence for three men convicted of dozens of rapes, kidnappings and killings in Kut, in the south. In the past, Mr. Talabani joined lawyers from other countries in denouncing the death penalty. Executions carry enormous emotional weight in Iraq, because Saddam Hussein’s government used them indiscriminately to get rid of its enemies.

Mr. Talabani appeared at a news conference on Wednesday afternoon with Gen. Richard B. Myers, the chairman of the United States Joint Chiefs of Staff. The general said he had spoken with both Mr. Talabani and Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari, the prime minister, about finishing the constitution. “I’ve been assured by both the president and prime minister that they are making progress,” he said.

Mr. Talabani thanked the general for American sacrifices in Iraq but did not mention the constitution.

Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the senior American commander in Iraq, said in an interview that he was still considering increasing the number of American forces here in advance of national elections in December.

With the insurgency showing little sign of abating, the Bush administration is pinning its hopes for stability in Iraq on the political process. American officials say Iraqi leaders must stick to the timetable of holding a national referendum on a new constitution by Oct. 15 and elections for a full-term government by Dec. 15, even though the Parliament missed the initial deadline of Aug. 15 for approving a draft of the constitution. With five days now to go, the top political leaders still appeared staunchly at odds on major issues like regional autonomy, the legal role of Islam and the authority of Shiite ayatollahs.

The Iraqi Islamic Party, a powerful Sunni Arab group, said in a written statement on Wednesday that politicians were “wasting time in useless discussions,” and that Kurds and Shiite Arabs on the 71-member constitutional committee were trying to distract Sunni Arabs from more important issues by lobbying for regional autonomy.

Nowhere was the precariousness of Iraq more evident than at Al Kindi Hospital in the aftermath of the explosions. A woman searched through bodies at the morgue, yelling, “Where is my son?” In a hospital bed, a thin man writhed in pain, his left leg encrusted with dirt and blood.

“I was in the street when I heard the first explosion at the bus station,” said the man, Ahsan Sadiq, 30, a worker at a Housing Ministry office. “Then I felt another explosion, and I woke up inside this hospital.”

A doctor in the room turned to a visitor and said, quietly, that Mr. Sadiq might need to have his leg amputated.

Layla Isitfan, Craig S. Smith and Thom Shanker contributed reporting for this article

One month before the U.S. invasion of Iraq, three State Department bureau chiefs warned of “serious planning gaps for post-conflict public security and humanitarian assistance” in a secret memorandum prepared for a superior.

The State Department officials, who had been discussing the issues with top military officers at the Central Command, noted that the military was reluctant “to take on ‘policing’ roles” in Iraq after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. The three officials warned that “a failure to address short-term public security and humanitarian assistance concerns could result in serious human rights abuses which would undermine an otherwise successful military campaign, and our reputation internationally.”

The Feb. 7, 2003, memo, addressed to Paula J. Dobriansky, undersecretary for democracy and global affairs, came at a time when the Pentagon was increasingly taking over control of post-invasion planning from the State Department. It reflected the growing tensions between State Department and Pentagon officials and their disparate assessments about the challenges looming in post-invasion Iraq.

The question of whether the United States planned adequately for the post-invasion occupation echoes today, as the insurgency continues to challenge U.S. policy in Iraq. Many senior State Department officials are still bitter about what they see as the Pentagon’s failure to take seriously their planning efforts, particularly in the “Future of Iraq” project.

The memo was one of several documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act and made public yesterday by the National Security Archive, a nonprofit research group. Other documents detail the specifics of the Future of Iraq project, which brought together Iraqi exiles and U.S. experts in an attempt to plan for such things as a new banking system, a new military and a new constitution.

In the memo, the three bureau chiefs offered to provide technical assistance to help the Central Command develop new plans to ensure law and order as well as humanitarian aid after the invasion. They said they had also raised the potential problems with retired Army Lt. Gen. Jay M. Garner, who was the first U.S. official to take charge of post-invasion Iraq.

The memo was submitted by Lorne W. Craner, then the assistant secretary for democracy, human rights and labor, who is now at the International Republican Institute; Arthur E. Dewey, assistant secretary for population, refugees and migration; and Paul E. Simons, then acting assistant secretary for international narcotics and law enforcement affairs and now deputy assistant secretary for energy, sanctions and commodities.

The three senior officials said it was “crucial” that the State Department leadership become “strong advocates” for the issues in planning discussions within the administration. “Responsibility must remain with coalition military forces until these functions can be turned over to an international public security force or other mechanism to be defined,” the memo said.

But the specific gaps in planning that they identified in the memo were not declassified.

A senior State Department official said yesterday that the memo provided no new information. “This isn’t a new story,” he said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of department rules. “There’s been no shortage of revisiting of decisions made and actions taken.”