"I didn't read all these details, but France's national interest lay in keeping Saddam in power and removing the sanctions. Isn't that why they opposed, even undermined, the war? I would not be surprised if France did a lot well before the war to try to prevent it."
So why create fake documents that would influence us in the direction of war? Italy was much more supportive of war - they seem like a more likely source on the surface.
The fake documents were intended to throw the US off the war footing we were taking against Iraq.
France stood to lose billions over it, but their plan backfired because they didn't know that the British had put together a white paper on Niger uranium. That is what Bush used in his 2003 State of The Union Address.
Read up on those documents. They were obviose forgeries with the intent of being discovered as such to weaken the standing against action in Iraq. There were names of officials who werent in power in decades, and the language used was alledgely something out of a babelfish translation. Although the U.S. and U.K. intelligence agencies had extensive amounts of information on Iraq's intention's of purchasing Uranium, by introducing these fake documents the anti-war types could succesfully argue that the allegations were based on forged documents. Here we are 3 years later, numerous U.K. and U.S. investigations later proving beyond a shadow of a doubt to the contrary, yet people are still saying that (just head over to DU). {sigh}