yes, but Loftus was also the guy telling us that the forged documents were planted to discredit the story. But I agree with you that Loftus was tipping off the mechanism by which this was going to play out, while at the same time saying it was a pack of lies (because the documents were planted). So he's on both sides of the issue (as always!).
Loftus is a little whacky (as many of us know). Remember that he also promised that Bush would have a "slam dunk" when the uranium from Al-Tuwaitha was going to be shown to be chemically identical to the material Libya gave up - showing that the Libyan nuclear program and the Iraq program were one in the same. That story dissappeared.
But I only post this information (Loftus and Batchelor were talking about this almost from the beginning) because as these stories about investigations regarding the Niger documents and Italy surface in the current time frame, this claim becomes noteworthy again.
Cliff Kincaid and Joe diGenova also support that theory, as does Seymour Hersch, although the latter is also a moonbat for the most part.