"Wilson said that a former prime minister of Niger, Ibrahim Assane Mayaki, was unaware of any sales contract with Iraq, but said that in June 1999 a businessman approached him, insisting that he meet with an Iraqi delegation to discuss "expanding commercial relations" between Niger and Iraq -- which Mayaki interpreted to mean they wanted to discuss yellowcake sales."
Doesn't this pretty much fit right into the timeline of Joe Wilson's retiring 1 year after marrying Valerie Plame to pursue his business interests? We all assume Wilson's trip was part of a CIA plot to get back at Cheney and/or cover up their own ineptitude regarding WMD, but (especially) if Plame was involved in encouraging CIA to send her husband TWICE to Niger (once in 1999, then again in 2002), doesn't it seem at least plausible Wilson himself was involved in the yellowcake deal and that all subsequent shenanigans are efforts to cover this up, using forged documents to obfuscate the situation?
If so, then the question is whether there is a "French connection" in all this. If Wilson's wife is French intel, isn't it at least plausible she would know Plame was the WMD person within CIA? How better to get an inside track on what the CIA knows and who knows it than to marry into the family?!? We've seen from the French oil-for-food scandal that they were shameless about making money off human misery. Why NOT get in on a yellowcake deal if the getting was good? After all, the French wouldn't have to clean up any subsequent mess that resulted from such yellowcake sales: it would inevitably fall to the Americans and/or Israelis to sort out the problems that would arise once Hussein had nuclear weapons.
Alternatively, Wilson himself simply recognized a great business opportunity when he spotted it in the natural course of his diplomatic duties. Valerie Plame either was complicit or clueless. If complicit, she shares a strong motivation to assist Wilson in covering this up, by recommending he take a trip to Niger. If clueless, Wilson himself might have subtly induced her to make this an innocent suggestion "Honey, remember when you had them send me to Niger in 1999. If someone needs to check out this Niger story, I'd be happy to do it. After all, especially with all my business connections, I still know all the who's who over there: it wouldn't take but a week to figure out what was going on..."