The interesting thing here...is that I am a contractor working for the AF in Germany. The customer has various items that they require on a weekly basis...which we research and research and buy...all IT items. I constantly have companies tell me that they won't ship overseas...even to DOD as the customer (not even the private individual). I had an episode with one company that markets government-authorized cryptology equiment...which it can only be sold to US government entitities...which said they would not ship to APO addresses (so I had to have a courier go and actually pick up the item in the states). The funny thing is that all of these rules and non-APO shippers....just make me more open to buying within Europe and avoiding US companies whenever possible.
From my own experience and training I can see why a company would not want to send cryptology equipment or software through the mail. There is too much opportunity for it to go astray.
AS for non-sensitive items, if you have an APO address that you can use in your association with the military, then you too can locate companies which will ship items to you. Otherwise, if something can be purchased in Europe, I would think that price wise, it would be much cheaper to purchase it there than have it shipped from the U.S.
The central idea of my idea is to save cost and effort for Freepers who wish to ship items to military personnel stationed in places like Afghanistan and Iraq.