Two of the most brutal terrorists the world has witnessed in the last 25 years, Abu Musab al Zarqawi and Ramzi Yousef, both have indicated to those close to them that the U.S.-led attack against Iraq in 1991 (also known as the Gulf War) fueled their hatred for the U.S. and put them in a position of training to attack U.S. interests, sympathizing with the former socialist Baath Party regime.

Zarqawi told friends that he wished to "work to establish an Islamic country and start the jihad against the 'Zionists and the American imperialists'" just after the first Gulf War in a time when those around him were sympathizing with Iraq. Gaith Abdul-Ahad, Guardian Unlimited, 4-29-06

Native Iraqi Abdul Rahman Yasin, Ramzi Yousef's co-conspirator in the 1993 WTC attack, said that Yousef had urged him to attack the U.S. on behalf of Iraq. "they (Yousef and Mohammed Salameh) also prodded him about being an Iraqi who should avenge the defeat of Iraq in the Gulf War. " CBS News, 60 Minutes: The Man Who Got Away, 5-31-02

This is not to suggest that both Yousef and Zarqawi were in lockstep with Saddam Hussein's regime (the ideologies of Saddam Hussein's socialist Baath Party and Islamic extremists are unquestionably opposed to one another) but serves to show that some Middle Eastern terrorists viewed Iraq's case during the first Gulf war sympathetically.