Charles Ferguson’s documentary is not to be missed. The first war film to take us inside the White House, Pentagon and Baghdad’s Green Zone, it provides a candid retelling of the events following the 2003 fall of the Iraqi capital by such high-ranking officials as former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, Ambassador Barbara Bodine, former Chief of Staff to Colin Powell Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, (a very articulate) Director of Strategic Policy for the U.S. Occupation Col. Paul Hughes and the man in charge of the occupation for a whole month, Jay Garner. (Paul Bremer, as we remember, took over, and undid all of Garner’s good work, in May 2003.)

Ferguson, who wrote, directed and produced the film, is no filmmaker. A former senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and a political science professor at both MIT and UC Berkeley, this is Ferguson’s first film. He wanted to make a film “that explained how and why Iraq has disintegrated in a way that was accurate yet accessible to a broad audience.”

In that he has succeeded. For all of us wondering what exactly the reconstruction plans were for post-invasion Iraq; for all of us wondering how such a small group of men with little or no military experience, knowledge of the Arab world or personal experience in Iraq – i.e. the Bush administration – came to make such obviously devastating decisions, No End In Sight provides the startling answers.

Grade: A

No End in Sight releases in select theaters Aug. 3.