It becomes clear fairly early on in the new documentary “No End in Sight” that it’s not the end that has been lost in the fog of war, but rather the beginning. We were so sure of how it would all turn out militarily in Iraq that those charged with running the invasion — namely the civilian leadership in the Bush administration — failed to consider how to begin the occupation of a sovereign state after the last white flag on the battlefield had been hoisted.

The political pressure to bring American troops home from Iraq has reached a fever pitch in the last year, but what director Charles Ferguson — bolstered by interviews with more than 30 people charged with managing postwar operations — captures here is what he believes to be the sober truth: That the mission was lost four years ago, mere months after it began.

While President Bush was staging photo opportunities to celebrate the toppling of Saddam Hussein, decisions were rapidly being made that would provide the kindling for the civil war that rages today. Returning to the beginning of it all to connect the policy dots that have been ignored in other Iraq documentaries (e.g. “The War Tapes,” “My Country, My Country,” “Operation Homecoming,” “Gunner Palace”), “No End in Sight” chronicles a disregard for Iraqi culture and for the recommendations of American officials on the ground in Baghdad.

The assessment here is damning and depressing, a 100-minute marathon of mishaps. But five mistakes by the American military, as distinguished here, were the most damaging:

1. A hands-off policy during postinvasion looting resulted in the devastation of Baghdad’s museums and libraries — the cornerstones of the nation’s culture — as well as the pilfering of various munitions depots by insurgents.

2. De-Baathification of the Iraqi government without regard for rank or record didn’t just purge the government of Hussein loyalists; it also fired a majority of the nation’s teachers, community leaders, and ministry officials, many of whom had joined the Baath Party simply to survive under the dictator’s iron fist.

3. Disbanding the Iraqi army contradicted America’s prewar planning, counteracted the efforts of American officials on the ground who were working in consultation with Iraqi military leaders, and led to the unemployment of 400,000 armed men.

4. The arrests of Iraqi men, following early IED attacks, combined with the Abu Ghraib torture scandal, turned tens of thousands of Iraqi families against American forces.

5. The construction of a barricaded “Green Zone” in the middle of Baghdad cut off government officials from the general public.

Using these points as a foundation for a much larger discussion, Mr. Ferguson, a former senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and professor at M.I.T., constructs a distressing diagnosis, namely that America’s initial inaction allowed Iraq to devolve into chaos, and that our systematic dismantling of the country’s governmental structure resulted in mass unemployment and widespread shame and rage. With the Iraqi leadership disbanded and the American leadership nowhere to be found, it didn’t take long for an array of religious extremists to step into the void.

If these are the film’s conclusions, what truly spins the analysis on its head is the apparent ignorance that brought them about. Talking to such officials as former Deputy Director of State Richard Armitage, Ambassador Barbara Bodine, who was initially charged with managing Baghdad, and Colonel Paul Hughes, who was empowered to oversee relations with the Iraqi army, Mr. Ferguson captures a snapshot of a dysfunctional bureaucracy making uninformed, unilateral decisions. He breaks down the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance — the body that was convened far too late to devise a plan for post-occupation Iraq — and chronicles the sobering shortcomings: that few American diplomats spoke Arabic, that officials were rotated out of Iraq too quickly to build relationships with their Iraqi counterparts, and that ORHA was rapidly disassembled so that the Central Provisional Authority could take control and essentially rule the country from Washington.

Decisions about the disbanding of the Iraqi army were made without consulting American officials in Baghdad, and from the outset, it’s clear that former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld ignored the counsel of generals on issues as basic as the number of troops neededtomaintainorderthroughout the country.

The final shock involves cronyism taken to the extreme, as some officials recall seeing legions of inexperienced 20-somethings walking the halls of the Green Zone in Baghdad. One interviewee, a professor, talks of encountering one of his former students, fresh out of college, who had been put in charge of revamping Baghdad’s traffic system. This was not an isolated case, Col. Hughes says, but rather a common occurrence: Young workers, some without a shred of experience, were allegedly sent over as a way of repaying parents for their political contributions.

It’s true that most of these facts and assessments have been reported in some fashion before, and that the final analysis won’t come as a much of a surprise to the politically active viewer. But that doesn’t mitigate the grim totality of Mr. Ferguson’s document, which lays these blunders side by side and spotlights the government officials — particularly an angry Robert Hutchings, who, as chairman of the National Intelligence Council, became convinced that Mr. Bush did not read the one-page summaries of intelligence reports he was forwarding to the Oval Office — who worked tirelessly to prevent them from occurring.

“No End in Sight” is the definitive Iraq documentary to focus on policy. It acknowledges that we entered this quagmire less with a strategy than with an ideological agenda, and concludes that we have created an unholy mess. There is indeed an end in sight — a violent end that is starting to look as bad as anything perpetrated by Saddam Hussein.

ssnyder@nysun.com