The directorial debut of Academy Award-winning documentary filmmaker Charles Ferguson, it premiered on January 22, 2007, at the Sundance Film Festival and opened in its first two theaters in the United States on July 27, 2007.

In particular, many of those interviewed claim that the inexperience of the core members of the Bush administration—and their refusal to seek, acknowledge or accept input from more experienced outsiders—was at the root of the disastrous occupation effort.

It asserts that serious mistakes made by the administration of President George W. Bush during that time were the cause of subsequent problems in Iraq, such as the rise of the insurgency, a lack of security and basic services for many Iraqis, sectarian violence, and, at one point, the risk of complete civil war.

The destruction of libraries and records, in combination with "de-Ba'athification", ruined the bureaucracy that existed prior to the U.S. invasion, and ORHA staff reported that they had to start from scratch to rebuild the government infrastructure.

Ebert concluded by stating that "I am distinctly not comparing anyone to Hitler, but I cannot help being reminded of the stories of him in his Berlin bunker, moving nonexistent troops on a map, and issuing orders to dead generals.

"[7][8] A. O. Scott of The New York Times called the film "exacting, enraging" and said that "[Charles Ferguson] presents familiar material with impressive concision and impact, offering a clear, temperate and devastating account of high-level arrogance and incompetence."

Scott explained that "most of the movie deals with a period of a few months in the spring and summer of 2003, when a series of decisions were made that did much to determine the terrible course of subsequent events" and "the knowledge and expertise of military, diplomatic and technical professionals was overridden by the ideological certainty of political loyalists."

[9] Rob Nelson of the Village Voice said: "Masterfully edited and cumulatively walloping, Charles Ferguson's No End in Sight turns the well-known details of our monstrously bungled Iraq war into an enraging, apocalyptic litany of fuck-ups."