Ex-cabinet ministers Robin Cook and Clare Short have attacked Tony Blair's stance over Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction. Cook told the BBC the government had made a "monumental blunder" on the issue and called for an independent inquiry. And Clare Short said the prime minister had duped the public by putting political spin on weapons intelligence information, to justify the case for war. But in an interview with Sky News, Blair said he had "no doubt whatsoever" that Saddam Hussein had had nuclear, chemical or biological weapons and would in due course produce that evidence. Robin Cook said also: "In the real world, governments make mistakes, but what they must never do is try to deny and cover up these mistakes." Cook said the UN weapons inspectors must return to Iraq to establish that Saddam did not have the capacity for weapons of mass destruction which would justify an invasion . Cook - who resigned as leader of the Commons over the war - said the notion of Saddam using any weapons of mass destruction within 45 minutes was wrong. "We have not found any of these chemical shells capable of being used in 45 minutes or 45 hours. "We have been in Iraq, since the war ended, for over 45 days and we have not found a single chemical shell. It is obvious that that statement was wrong." Short, who resigned as international development secretary in the aftermath of the war, said she believed Blair had secretly agreed the date for war with US President George Bush last September. She accepted Iraqi scientists had been trying to develop chemical and weapons. But she also hit out at the government's claim that some of those weapons could be launched "within 45 minutes" of an order. That "duped" people into thinking the threat was much more urgent when the reality was that there was time to do things properly, she argued. "The claim the stuff was weaponised and might be used in 45 minutes was part of the secret commitment to a date, which meant everything had to be hurried along," she told BBC One's Politics Show. There had been deceit too in the way France had been "vilified" as an excuse not to get a fresh UN resolution before the war, Ms Short added. **'Have patience'*** Earlier, Blair, who is now in France for the G8 summit, said the results of interviews with Iraqi scientists and others had left him in no doubt on the weapons issue. There were also investigations under way at "hundreds" of Iraq sites which were turning up more evidence, he said. Tony Blair said: "Over the coming weeks and months we will assemble this evidence and then we will give it to people. "And I have no doubt whatever that the evidence of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction will be there. **Absolutely,***" he said. "Those people who are sitting there saying: 'Oh, it's all going to be proved to be a great big fib got out by the security services, there will be no weapons of mass destruction' - just wait, and have a little patience." **Senate to Probe Iraq Weapons Intelligence*** Two Senate committees want to investigate whether U.S. intelligence accurately pointed to banned weapons in Iraq as claimed by the Bush administration in going to war, senators said Sunday. More than 11 weeks have passed without conclusive evidence of an Iraqi program to develop weapons of mass destruction, senators said, and it's time to investigate whether intelligence reports saying so were correct. An investigation doesn't mean senators think that something was done incorrectly, Sen. John Warner, R-Va., chairman of the Armed Services Committee, said on CNN's "Late Edition." "By the fact that we're just investigating it, should not in any way indicate that we're putting any credibility doubt against" the CIA or the Bush administration, Warner said. He said his committee and the Senate Intelligence Committee might look jointly into the situation. One member of the Intelligence panel, Sen. Bob Graham, running for the Democratic presidential nomination from Florida, went further than other senators in declaring on CNN that the government might have willfully distributed erroneous information on Iraq's arsenal. "If we don't find these weapons of mass destruction, it will represent a serious intelligence failure or the manipulation of that intelligence to keep the American people in the dark," Graham said. The Bush administration's main argument for the Iraq invasion was that deposed President Saddam Hussein held chemical and biological weapons and possibly was developing nuclear weapons. All were banned to Iraq under sanctions imposed by the United Nations after in August 1990 after Iraq invaded neighboring Kuwait and by subsequent U.N. resolutions. While Democrats have been bashing the White House for the military's failure to find unconventional weapons in Iraq, Warner and other Republican senators joined in Sunday in proposing a congressional inquiry. The Pentagon is sending a new group of weapons hunters to Iraq to expand the search for banned weapons, beginning Monday. **PHOTO CAPTION*** US Secretary of State Colin Powell during his address to the United Nations Security Council earlier this year before the US waged war on Iraq. (AFP/File/Timothy A. Clary)