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flickr image By DJHEAVYD
INTERVIEW with: Lawrence Wilkerson
Speaker 1/ Rob Kall, Interviewer
Speaker 2/ Lawrence Wilkerson , Interviewee
Rob Kall: And welcome to the Rob Kall Bottom Up Radio Show. [reciting Station ID] Sponsored by OpEdNews.com .
My guest tonight is retired Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson . He was the former Chief of Staff to U.S. Secretary of State, Colin Powell. And he ' s now an adjunct Professor of Government at the College of William and Mary.
part 2 of interview begins here.
Rob
Kall: Now,
as
being
engaged
as
you
were
in
the
Joint
Chiefs
of
Staff
when
Colin
Powell
directed it
and
you
were
his
assistant,
do
the
Joint
Chiefs
of
Staff
have
a
control
over
the
military? Does anybody?
Lawrence Wilkerson:
That's an excellent question. I think the safest ingredient in our Republic with regard to the civil - military relationship, is the Officer Corps of the military. There are some exceptions to what I'm going to say, but by and large those exceptions prove the rule.
And what I'm going to say, is that the Officer Corps of the United States Military understands the Constitution. They understand their oath to the Constitution. The Constitution is not the President , or their oath is not to the President , not to the Commander in Chief . Their oath is to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies , foreign and domestic. I think that Officer Corps would shudder at the kind of thing that we might be thinking about. Caesar crossing the Rubicon, and not leaving his Legions behind. It's just not going to happen in this country, in my view. But the insidious increase in power, and the influence over foreign policy that the military has, is very dangerous. And maybe in the long run it's even more dangerous than a coup. Because what happens is, the power shifts gradually, and gradually, and incrementally, over to the war making side , to where you wake up one morning and all you're doing is making war. And you have so many people , from Lockheed Martin to the Congress of the United States , to the Armed Forces, to you name it, who are making so much money off that war making , that you can't stop it. That's not a coup, but it is something worse in my view. It is ultimately the destruction of our Republic.
