The U.S. military thought that it would be easier to keep public opinion about the war in Iraq from degenerating into a Vietnam-type situation by censoring images of dead soldiers returning to the States. During Vietnam, the flag-draped coffins of the soldiers who were actually out there dying every day for whatever we fight wars over were covered on the evening news most nights (or so I hear – I was born just before Jimmy Carter’s election).
What the U.S. has done this time around is simply ban the press from photographing the coffins.
A recent FOIA request by University of Delaware professor Ralph Begleiter forced the government to release its own photographs of the coffins, and there’s more than a few places where you can find them now, but here they are on Flickr, brought to you by the Flickr “Iraq” RSS feed.
Also: The photos via Washington Post, more on the release at The Nation, Guardian U.K..