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But what would be the motivation of the French government in producing the documents?

If they wanted to embarrass Britain or the US one would think they would produce documents that would at least try to fool them. But these forgeries were really cheap.

I mean, using the signature of a person who had not occupied the purported position for over ten years! Like someone said, a twenty minute search on the internet would have shown these documents to be forgeries.

As far as Joe Wilson and his connections to the Saudis, near as I can figure he was asked to research the truth of the documents, did that, and reported (privately) the documents were untrue.

What else was he supposed to do? Tell the CIA the documents were true?

I have to say I simply don't get the connection between the necessary motivation and the French and the Saudis.

The exact point of making poor quality forgeries is to use them to tarnish any other evidence.

British intelligence still stands by their charge that Saddam tried to acquire uranium in Africa, and that their evidence is not related to the forgeries. However, that charge has been completely obscured by said forgeries. Therefore we see just how useful creating these forgeries was for the French government.

Had the INC or some pro-war group been behind them, as you reference, why not make them much more believable, and at least not make them trivially easy for the leader of the anti-war coalition to disprove?

All the arrows point to the same place...France. Considering the fact that at the same time France was attempting to bribe other countries to oppose us in the UN, and threatening would-be members of the European Union from assisting us, this kind of treachery is hardly out of place.

As for Wilson, well, perhaps he could have actually done an investigation, which he did not, as, again, he admitted. Sending a noted anti-war activist with no background in this sort of investigation, and ties to a government opposed to American intervention would be at a minimum criminal negligence by whoever sent him. This of course presumes he was sent with any sort of good intent of course.

As we now know, with Wilson claiming he has no idea who sent him...and could not identify the person if he had too...combined with his wife's boss's (probable) forced retirement he was sent on Plame's recommendation. It should be pointed out that originally he did not deny this...

She and Wilson should probably be facing charges of high treason, though the media has insulated them unfortunately, as part of their broad anti-war effort.