Yes, you're right. But they didn't, did they? Instead they went out of their way to portray Hussein as, well maybe not a poor misunderstood guy who loved puppies and sunsets and long walks on the beach, but certainly as someone who was much more reasonable and humane than he really was. And at the same time they went out of their way to give great amounts of air time to Democrats and anti-war types all too eager to paint GWB as the imbecilic selected stooge of Big Oil and the great neo-con/Jew conspiracy to take over the world.
That's the problem. They had a multitude of different ways that they could have dealt with this, and they deliberately chose the most craven and self-serving path there was.