February 26th 1:50AM

Rawalpindi—This morning as I awoke I pulled back my curtains, revealing the Margalla Hills and all the morning activities outside on the street. I went through my morning routine of checking email, preparing gear, reading the newspaper, and checking out the wire for recent events. As I turned on the T.V., flipping through the channels I stopped on a favorite movie of mine--Braveheart. I sat down on my couch with the newspaper in my lap and watched the movie as I’ve done so many times before. This time it was it was different. As I watched the scenes of the men fighting for their freedom, I looked out the window and pondered what is freedom’s cost. Even today people are still laying down their lives for the smallest taste of freedom. I thought a lot about one line in the movie where the William Wallace character says, “Fight and you may die, run, and you'll live... at least for a while. And dying in your beds, many years from now, would you be willing to trade all the days, from this day to that, for one chance, just one chance, to come back here and tell our enemies that they may take our lives, but they'll never take...Our freedom!” I thought about how many times I’ve awoken from my bed at my home and never once thought about all the freedoms I have, and then I wondered how many others have taken the same freedoms for granted. After that I could hardly sit still. I had my mind made up that I was going to go out and find some images. Not soon after that I received word of a suicide attack in Rawalpindi. I wasted no time and headed downstairs to get a car with Betsy. The drive seemed to take forever. When we finally reached the scene the road was blocked off so we headed closer on foot. I approached slowly, trying to test the water as to how close I could get and to decipher the whole scene. I saw a good position across the road and moved closer. Looking around I realized that I may be one of the few U.S. photojournalists still here at least at this scene I didn’t see any others. The scene was quiet despite hundreds of police, military and investigators. Only the occasional ambulance siren broke the silence. The suicide bomber, dressed as a beggar, killed the Pakistan army's surgeon general in the highest-level assassination since President Pervez Musharraf joined the U.S. war against terror. The lone bomber targeted Lt. Gen Mushtaq Baig’s vehicle killing him, his driver, guard, and five other civilians. The scene was complete carnage. The cars, nearly a half dozen, were mangled in a pile of steel and shattered glass. The workers picked up human remains and placed them in bags as hundreds of onlookers watched on. The debris stretched as far as a half of a block. Next to me a man stood by the vehicle he was driving when the blast went off. His windows were all blown out and a large piece of shrapnel tore through the backseat. I couldn’t imagine how we felt. As the scene died down, we decided we had enough and headed back to our car. Now, having covered my first suicide-bombing scene I truly hope it is my last. Enough innocent blood has been spilled in this country!