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The Valentine's Day tale of the legless Iranian has a strong similarity to a bomb factory in the heart of Manila in 1995. Most of those involved in the plot to kill the pope and to bomb airplanes were as incompetent as Tuesday's Bangkok bombers. But their leader, Ramzi Yousef, was a successful terrorist who had already launched a bomb attack on the New York World Trade Center and a China Airlines plane, among others.

Margaret Thatcher, after narrowly escaping a terrorist bomb, noted that "they only have to get lucky once". The more terrorists try to attack Bangkok, the greater the chance they will one day succeed.