WWW- Posted on the Daily Trojan site: Authorities in Lakeland, Fla. arrested former police officer Chris Wilson on Oct. 7, 2005, and charged him with 301 counts of violating the state's obscenity laws. Wilson faces three charges per pornographic photograph or video clip found on his server.

Apparently - I didn't investigate this part of the Web site myself, I swear - Wilson posted photos of married couples having sex, stories depicting sexual fantasies, webcams, etc. What put him on federal authorities' radar screens, however, was his decision to provide free access to U.S. soldiers who had proven that they were in Iraq and Afghanistan by providing photographs. Some of the wartime pictures featured raw Iraqi casualties.

Supposedly his unusually harsh ­-one year per misdemeanor - charges were, cross our hearts, limited to the pornography. But it was the apparently lawful photos that were criticized for making the United States look bad abroad. The Army dropped its own investigation, unable to prove that troops were involved. Go figure.

When I first read about Wilson's Web site in Rolling Stone, I felt repulsed. But as the day progressed I couldn't shake the article from my head. Who decides obscenity? Why not look at the war photographs? Why should my world be hidden from me, or anyone, if it's really my world?

I surfed onto Wilson's blog. At first, the photos I found were harmless, beautiful even. The servicemen and women were captured unassumingly amongst the landscape. It was tough to tell where to separate the geometric, dusty architecture from the beige and yellow sand. The buildings and hazy palm trees broke into the vast shore of blue sky. Even the tanks idling on narrow roads seemed lazy, tired.

This contrasted what I found next, when I came across what I was looking for. These pictures contained men with broken necks, or charred skeletons with bits of flesh hanging off. Usually the bodies were accompanied by uniformed men gesturing towards the mutilation, as though the viewer could somehow miss it. The snapshot quality of the images was the most chilling part. The troops were grinning as if they were posing with Shamu. After a few of the nasty ones I couldn't bring myself to click further.

I'm not interested in discussing our country's foreign policy in the Middle East. We're there, and it looks like we're going to be there for a while. At this moment I'm concerned for the U.S. soldier I went to high school with. He could be my peer in college, or combat, not an entirely different world. From the postings it was clear that the troops were less interested in the pornography than in having their story heard. The notion of real life being obscene seems increasingly absurd. I find it hard to believe that children are truly that vulnerable to being disturbed by, or unable to handle the gravity of, the truth.

There is more to war than red-white-and-blue graphics, pie charts and an information ticker beneath the news anchor. Would the war fall apart if we communicate with those who serve us? If we share their glory, their stoicism, their horror? If the answer is yes, then we are deceiving ourselves. Our notions of obscenity exist not for children, but so adults can act like children, and live in a fragile, pretend world where cookie cutter love and death substitutes the real thing and everyone is absolved of guilt.