I still remember the last time I went to the wall, one of my close friend's grandpa died there a week before he was supposed to get out. He and his dad were both there and they read letters from his grandpa from Vietnam and the last one was about how he would be back in a week and be glad to see them and they both broke down and cried and I could feel how much they lost, how much a life is worth. Then we went to the wall and saw how many of these lives had been lost, how many families were just like the one my friend was in, missing something important, a life. Every time I saw on the news or in the paper about a certain number of people dying I would always think of how many families would me broken apart, never to see their loved one again. That was the day that war became real to me, I had been to the wall before and all I saw then was a list of names. From that point forward I saw it as real people, who had real families that loved them and were broken apart. From that point forward, I will never accept us going into a war unless we are in danger. When we got hit on 9/11 I felt a response attack was necessary, but I will never support a war that isn't very necessary because I realize that your quote is correct, "war is hell".
I think showing coffins will also help people realize the impact of this war. When you hear 100 people died it doesn't sound like a lot because we lose that many a lot, but if you saw 100 coffins lined up (showing the people and their families is a great idea too, and shows more respect to the dead person), you would realize the cost of this or any war. I get the washington post and every month it will have pictures of all the people from the area who died in Iraq that month and it just makes me think of the pain all the people are going through. I think people need to see this, they need to see the cost of war and the reality that "war is hell". But as I said before they should also see the progress made. They should see pictures of how Iraq was before we got rid of Saddam, and pictures of how it is now. That way they can make an educated decision about whether to support the war or not, whether the sacrifice was truly necessary.