"As the commandos closed in, guerrillas began firing with assault rifles, machine guns and mortars or rockets," wrote the AP. "The Iraqi police then called for support from the 42nd Infantry Division. The Americans sent in Apache attack helicopters and smaller OH-58D Kiowa helicopters, as well as ground troops. An official at the Interior Ministry said some insurgents tried to escape by boat across the lake, but were killed on the water or as they tried pushing off from shore."

All in all, a dramatic attack that underscored the growing competence of US-trained Iraqi security forces, the increasing isolation of the insurgency, and the presence of foregin fighters in Iraq. In short, an attack that reinforced everything the United States wanted to say about the current situation in Iraq.

Which is probably why it never happened. Or at least, why it didn't happen the way we were told it happened.

Burdened by the dangers of reporting in Iraq, unofficial military censorship, and the conventions of foreign correspondence early reports about the "Battle at Lake Thanthar" were compiled almost entirely from briefings given by Iraqi and US government officials. The reports, in the NY Times, the AP, and elsewhere emphasized the high insurgent death toll, the importance of Iraqi civilian tips, the presence of foreign fighters, the large ammount of equipment at the camp, and the fact that insurgents that tried to escape in boats across the lake were killed.

Late last night, a reporter from the Agence France Press (AFP) took the amazing step of actually going to Lake Thanthar. Here's some of what he or she found:

"Insurgents were still manning a training camp in northern Iraq in defiance of a blistering raid by the authorities ... About 30 to 40 fighters were seen Wednesday at the lakeside training camp attacked by US and Iraqi forces on Tuesday and denied they had ever left, an AFP correspondent who visited the site said."

"There were numerous discrepancies in the accounts given by the rebel and Iraqi security forces. The US military said Thursday it was investigating the new accounts of a rebel presence after what had been reported as a crushing raid ... A fighter named Amer, who claimed membership in the Secret Islamic Army of Iraq, said the men had never abandoned the camp and only 11 of his comrades were killed in airstrikes on the site."

So, how did the Iraqi insurgents get back to their base so quickly? Perhaps some escaped? But as the original AP story notes, an official at the Interior Ministry said some insurgents tried to escape by boat across the lake, but were killed on the water or as they tried pushing off from shore. And in his reporting for the New York Times, Edward Wong quotes the same official at the Interior Ministry saying "some insurgents tried to escape by boat across the lake, but were killed on the water or as they tried pushing off from shore."

So, it appears that those trying to escape by boat were killed. But after the AFP first-hand reports filtered out of Lake Thanthar, General Adnan Thabet, a senior advisor to the interior ministry, told AFP by phone that "many escaped by boat. During the fight, 30 boats left." And in an story in The New Standard that highlights a number of contradictions in the Lake Thanthar reporting, Chris Schumway notes that "Thabet added that the raid resulted in no prisoners, but that several militants 'escaped by boat' across the lake. Kadhim, the Interior Ministry spokesman, told the AP that twenty boats escaped during the raid."

So what's actually going on in Iraq? As we've noted on this page a number of times already, no one has any idea. Certainly not the journalists assigned to report there. As Juan Cole puts it:

"American news organizations such as CNN refuse to report news that is only carried by AFP, because they consider it to have inadequate journalistic quality-control. But reports like this one are not being done by US wire services in Iraq, and if we don't take AFP seriously, we essentially may as well just believe whatever Interior Minister Falah al-Naqib and the Pentagon claim.

"Unfortunately, the US military is filtering our news from Iraq, and we only hear about a fraction of the violence that actually takes place there. What we do hear is often imbued by a kind of US boosterism (such as the recent faintly ridiculous claim that Fallujah is the safest city in Iraq-- as though it were still an inhabited city)."