ANDERSON COOPER, CNN ANCHOR: About a month and a half has passed since the war began. And so far, U.S. forces have yet to find hard evidence of Iraq's suspected illegal weapons program. Now that doesn't seem to matter much to the American public. A CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll shows that among those who watched President Bush's speech on Thursday night, declaring an end to major combat, 79 percent said the war with Iraq was justified, even if no illegal weapons are found. Still, Defense officials say don't give up on that just yet. Here's CNN Pentagon correspondent Chris Plante.</s>CHRIS PLANTE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Pentagon officials continue to insist that they will be able to make the case to the world that the regime of Saddam Hussein was involved in the production of weapons of mass destruction. In fact, they say, considerable evidence has already been collected in Iraq, but they want to wait until they can make a complete presentation of the information before going public, rather than releasing it in a piecemeal fashion. Specially trained weapons teams have fanned out across Iraq, searching hundreds of suspect locations and are collecting, among other things, thousands of pages of documents they believe are related to the programs. Senior regime official Tariq Aziz has told U.S. intelligence that Iraq had destroyed stocks of the banned weapons prior to the U.S. invasion, but experts say even if elements of the program have been destroyed, it may be possible to establish their existence through documents, soil samples, and eyewitness testimony, among other methods. 1,000 weapons experts are in the process of converging on Iraq, including 10 who had worked as inspectors with the United Nations teams previously in the country. U.S. officials continue to insist that the task is more difficult than it might appear in a country the size of California, filled with tunnels and secret facilities, and a former regime that spent 12 years hiding and disguising the programs. Pentagon officials won't say what sort of time table they're looking at to make their case to the world, but as international patience grows short on this matter, they insist that they're going to take all the time necessary, and collect the evidence before making their case public. Chris Plante, CNN, the Pentagon.
Will U.S. Find WMDs in Iraq?