So you see, there really is an Iraq-al Qaeda tie. Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball report at Newsweek.com that Tariq A. Hamdi, an Iraqi-born U.S. citizen now employed at the new Iraqi Foreign ministry, may have served as an American contact for an al Qaeda front group in the late 1990s. In 1998, Hamdi reportedly hand-delivered a satellite-phone battery to Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan.

And the really funny thing is that after his interrogation session at the State Department, Hamdi emerged carrying a carton with the words "weapon of mass destruction" on the side, and Valerie Plame's phone number scrawled prominently on the wrapping paper. --HOLLY MARTINS

American Contact? [Newsweek]