Operation Desert Porn

 
Sayler's stay in Haverhill wound up lasting longer than he'd expected. By the time he returned to Anaconda it was mid-June. The desert heat beat down on his fair skin and the scalp peeking through his thinning red hair.

Still, he was glad to be back, especially since he'd be doubling his salary with his new job at ITT. Even more than the cash, Sayler was simply happy to be working again; two months on the sidelines was too long. A lifelong member of the NRA, he had a passion for firearms that had led him to make a career out of repairing military small arms—rifles, handguns, grenade launchers, and the like. His excitement about being back in Balad, however, was short-lived. Two weeks after his arrival, and a day after celebrating America's independence, military police instructed everyone living in Sayler's building to leave their rooms and wait outside.

General Order Number 1A is little known outside the military. It's the official reason servicemen and -women are not allowed to drink in Iraq. In addition to booze, GO-1A bans things like gambling, currency exchanges, and proselytizing. And as it happens, GO-1A also bans pornography—which may have something to do with why it hasn't worked all that well at Camp Anaconda.

The military hasn't always had such a policy in place. Skin magazines, for instance, were common in Vietnam. But in 1990, General Norman Schwarzkopf issued a precursor to GO-1A that outlawed porn in the first Gulf war. Variations on the order have been around ever since, affecting soldiers serving in Kosovo, Afghanistan, and Iraq. GO-1A itself was initiated by General Tommy Franks on December 19, 2000, as a way to demonstrate cultural sensitivity to U.S. troops' Muslim hosts.

But just because there's a prohibition on pornography doesn't mean there's no actual pornography to be found. "In the year and a half I spent there," Sayler says of his time at Camp Anaconda, "it was a locker room environment. Porn was passed around and traded like baseball cards." In the barracks, away from the commander's watchful eye, soldiers and contractors swapped movies among themselves, circulating the titles like some informal X-rated lending library. Whatever the official rule against pornography, in reality it was pretty much don't ask, don't tell.

I myself spent two years in the Army in the late 1990s, experiencing firsthand this kind of wink-wink, nudge-nudge approach to porn while serving in Korea. Almost everybody had a stash of magazines or videos, including many of the sergeants. (One in particular used to host screenings in his room. We'd gather for a few beers as a German porn star repeated, "Ya, ya, ya," with a militaristic cadence.) I went through three or four health and welfare inspections and never lost any of my own adult materials. I even once accidentally left a copy of Playboy on my nightstand during a formal inspection. As my unit's top sergeant eyed the magazine with disapproval, I asked if he could see where the bunny logo was hidden. All I received was a stern look. But it seems that times have changed. If I were serving today, I'd hide my porn under a false floor in my drawer, as I used to do with my vodka.

There are some gray areas when it comes to GO-1A, like nude photos (with no sex acts depicted) and sex toys. But Sayler knew he was breaking the rules with the DVDs Cassidey had given him—it's hard to misinterpret Cassidey's Day Off. Though he had been careful to keep his cache out of sight, making sure to enjoy it only in the privacy of his room, he knew the military was within its rights to enforce regulations.

Then again, the military has to follow the rules, too.