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Former CBS Moscow bureau chief Beth Knobel has passed along a piece by Gregory Papadatos, an army medic. Papadatos, a sergeant, is in New York between tours; he has served in Iraq and will soon be deploying to Afghanistan.

Papadatos writes about a close friend, an active duty Army medic now in Iraq whose tour has just been extended for three months. "She got there in October of 2006 and was expecting to leave in October of '07," he writes. "Now she will be there until January of '08...unless she gets hurt before then."

Here's a little more information about Papadatos' friend:

She joined the Army with a high school diploma and no college. We left the Army's Combat Medic Course just under three years ago, and since then she has spent a year in Korea, a year and a half in Texas, and six months in Iraq. In those three years, she has earned an Associate's Degree, taking classes at night and on the weekends (and, in Iraq, online, in her spare time). She had planned to go to college - a REAL college - full-time starting in January of '08. Now she won't be back in time for the first semester of the year, so she'll have to wait for the summer or fall of '08. And - oh yes! - she enlisted, in the summer of 2003, for FOUR years, but the "Stop-Loss" policy keeps her in uniform until further notice.

Continues Papadatos:

Now, keeping all of this in mind, somebody please tell me why a deejay with a reputation for irreverence calling a basketball player a "nappy-headed ho" should leave that woman "scarred for life" (which is a direct quote from one of the Rutgers basketball players, in Wednesday's newspapers). After that, somebody please tell me why I should care about it. And THEN somebody please tell me why that one incident, which caused no bleeding or dying, is getting more radio air time than the fact that MY little buddy - along with about 100,000 of her closest friends and colleagues - has just been told she has to spend three extra months in a combat zone.

You can read more about Papadatos and other soldiers here.

CBS News Moscow Bureau Chief Beth Knobel has given us a look at how challenging it is to be a foreign reporter covering Russia, now she’s helping us understand why it is so dangerous to be a Russian journalist. The recent murder of Anna Politkovskaya has raised concern at high levels and has many observers talking. In a dispatch from Moscow, Knobel writes:

She was one of Russia's most famous and courageous journalists. Now her killing has caused an international outcry.

Anna Politkovskaya was a reporter for one of Russia's few remaining independent newspapers, "Novaya Gazeta." She was an uncompromising critic of the Russian government. But her main subject was the bloody war in Chechnya.

Politkovskaya wrote about the murder of innocent civilians, the corruption of local officials in Chechnya's Moscow-backed government and war crimes by Russian forces stationed in Chechnya. She reportedly was investigating torture in Chechen prisons at the time of her death.

"She was hammering away at the Putin regime, and she had a lot of people respecting her for what she was doing here in Russia," said reporter Pavel Felgengauer, a friend of the late journalist.

In a side note, Politkovskaya had a special relationship with CBS News which is remembered by CBS News vice president Linda Mason here.

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This week, more than 1,700 top newspaper editors from around the world are meeting in Moscow for the World Association of Newspapers Congress' annual convention. The meetings, notes the BBC, opened "with harsh criticism of Russia's media freedom." Russian President Vladimir Putin defended himself against charges that the state was trying to increase its control of the press. "There is still very widespread skepticism, both inside and outside your country, about whether there exists any real willingness to see the media become a financially strong, influential and independent participant in Russian society today," World Association of Newspapers Congress President Gavin O'Reilly told Putin.

We wanted to know a little more about what it's like to be a reporter in Russia, and so we turned to CBS News Moscow correspondent Beth Knobel, who has been reporting from Russia since the early 1990s. Below you'll find her dispatch on the rules for reporters in Putin's Russia, how the situation has changed since the administration of former president Boris Yeltsin, and how if you think the American press corps sometimes asks softball questions, you've never been to a Russian press conference.

In a few days, I'll be celebrating an anniversary -- 14 years since I moved to Russia to become a foreign correspondent.

It was June, 1992. The Soviet Union had just fallen apart. Boris Yeltsin, the Russian president, was still seen as a hero for facing down a hard-line coup attempt. And being a foreign correspondent here was a really big deal.

Back then, a request from a foreign media organization made bureaucrats jump. One phone call was enough to guarantee an interview with just about any government official. Officials actually WANTED to talk with us.

But now, things have changed. Being a foreign reporter in Putin's Russia can be a frustrating experience.

There's no problem dealing with ordinary Russians. Getting out into the field is still almost always a terrific and fun experience. The Russians are a warm and wonderful people, and are exceedingly kind to foreigners. We've literally had people share their last loaf of bread with us...along with their last bottle of vodka.

The tough part is dealing with officialdom. Organizing interviews with ministers and other high ranking government officials often takes literally months. We can go for weeks on end without getting an invitation to come to the Kremlin.

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