Former U.S. attorney general Ramsey Clark, who’s been helping to defend Saddam Hussein, found time August 13 to celebrate the ailing Fidel Castro’s 80th birthday at the Cuban Mission to the U.N. “I hope he has a full and quick recovery,” Clark, 79, said afterward. He’s known Castro for years. “I’m optimistic by nature. He looked better than he did a day before entering surgery.” Clark dismissed as “utter nonsense” predictions advanced by ­anti-Castro exiles in Miami that there will be a revolution in Cuba when the dictator passes away. “The idea of an uprising is like the idea that U.S. troops would be greeted in Iraq with joy, flowers, and candy.” Speaking of which, he thinks Saddam will be executed, on charges of genocide against tens of thousands of Kurds, after his second trial, which should get under way in the fall. “I think that’s what they want,” Clark said of the tribunal’s five judges who are expected to render a verdict on Saddam’s first trial on October 16. “I think that’s what the U.S. wants.”

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