"Italian diplomats have claimed that, by disseminating bogus documents stating that Iraq was trying to buy low-grade "yellowcake" uranium from Niger, France was trying to "set up" Britain and America in the hope that when the mistake was revealed it would undermine the case for war, which it wanted to prevent."
Then why didn't they expose it prior to us going in? One would think that if it was a setup for the purpose stated, there would be an absolute trigger to expose it before it undermined their whole purpose - which it did.
Ah! I see your point now and it's a very good question and it's open to all sorts of speculation.
Perhaps there was some failure in the "trigger" like someone's palm not getting greased properly or soon enough and events overtook any attempt to set it off. (Follow the money.)
Another scenario: Perhaps someone got cold feet about revealing the documents as fakes before the invasion because they realized that the US and the coalition were going to go regardless (yellowcake being only one of several items of WMD concern) and that revealing them as fakes afterward would undermine the coalition's credibility, even if only temporarily, and that would have some usefulness. (However, even though they wanted the documents revealed as fakes, I'm sure they didn't want them traced back to France...chalk it up to poor execution of the plan.)
Do I believe any of these scenarios? I don't know, but it sure is fun to speculate even if I'm still fully clothed and I'm about to go put on my pajamas!
Cheers!
Also, sleeper story getting curiouser and curiouser - just because they planted fake documents, doesn't mean Niger uranium wasn't on the market. To Libya for example. Proliferating and lying, both...