Factual error: It is said in the film that Ice Cube's character works in an airport in Detroit. When the scene shows Ice Cube at work as a baggage handler, there are mountains in the background. There are no mountains in the Detroit area. (00:14:10)
Factual error: At times in the movie we see George Clooney handle solid bars of gold as if they were made of balsa wood, or chocolate. Gold is one of the heaviest metals, and bars the size of those depicted in the movie would weigh about 75 pounds. (00:33:40)
Factual error: Near Karbala, during the first choppy, slow motion shootout, Mark Wahlberg is shot in the vest with an AK-47 and somehow manages to walk it off. This is preposterous. The vest issued to troops in Desert Storm (and the one he is wearing) is the PASGT fragmentation vest, which is only rated to stop shrapnel from explosions and won't even defeat a pistol round without offering severe ballistic trauma to the wearer. If you were hit with an AK-47 in a vest of that rating, it would tear through the kevlar like a hot knife through butter.
Factual error: Many people through the film are speaking Arabic and they are mostly Iraqi, but they are speaking dialects similar to Syrians & Lebanese.
Factual error: The stolen cars from Kuwait have Saudi Arabian registration plates instead of Kuwaiti ones. (01:09:30)
Factual error: The Iraqi gunship helicopter attacking the group at the castle is an MD 500 Defender. However, Iraq has never owned or operated these helicopters.
Factual error: When Gates, Barlow, Elgin, and Vig are leaving the village after the milk truck explosion, they give the people MREs. However, the MREs they are passing out are 1996 designed packages. From 1981 until 1995, MREs had a dark brown bag while ones produced from 1996 and current are tan.
Factual error: The movie is supposed to be set in central and southern Iraq. At one point, the men are driving along in a Humvee north of Nasiriyah towards Karbala, just south west of Baghdad. Throughout this section of the film, mountains can be seen on the horizon. The actual desert of Iraq is so flat it might as well be a parking lot. The only actual geographic features of the terrain are agricultural berms, which those mountains aren't.
