A commentary piece in TIME makes the point that political ads images of coffins of American war casualties are not only within propriety, but also that these images deserve media attention. At the very least, anyone who was okay with Republicans constantly flashing images of the 9/11 attacks during the 2004 campaigns needs to tone down their moral outrage.

One argument against is that media coverage of flag-draped coffins arriving in Dover is in bad taste and disrespectful to the dead. However, when did paying homage and reminding the public of a soldier's sacrifice, of over 2500 soldiers' sacrifices, become disrespectful? These things need to be acknowledged, need to fester in the back of our minds, so that when our minds fix on the war in Iraq the prominent images are not Saddam's statue toppling or Bush on an aircraft carrier, but are instead those of war. Of car bombs and night raids, security checkpoints and mosque bombings, of coffins that are still coming back at the same pace as two years ago. To acknowledge that death means something beyond abstract rhetoric or numbers that only garner attention for their relation to multiples of 500.
There was a news story a while back that I can't remember completely, but there was some kind of uproar over some of the war dead having returned to the US without the proper coffin treatment; i.e. in crates. The details are fuzzy, but clearly the story didn't get much further because you couldn't confirm anything, because the public and media didn't have access. If that's the case though, we've pretty much failed on every count, haven't we?