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My thoughts and prayers are with general powell's family. he was the son of jamaican immigrants. rising to the highest level of the u.s. government. >> he was so extraordinary and alongside people like general barry mccaffrey who fought in vietnam and became kind of the true north for younger officers like me coming along. i'll give you a practical example of his mentorship. i've known him for many, many years. finally i was selected to be supreme ally commander of nato, probably due to a computer error of some kind. i went to see general powell, and i said, sir, what advice have you for me? h...

The way up to being a four-star general, at every level i would like to general powell to what i ought to do in tough situations. stephanie, you mentioned a minute ago about looking up to people. as you know, i'm about 5'5". i really looked up to general powell. and when i went to see him after being selected to be supreme ally commander of nato, i said, sir, what do you think? how should i approach this job? he said, jim, the secret is, you go to europe. don't think you're going to become charlemagne. don't think you're going to take over the roman empire. it was a classic colin powell line. ...

The second point to remember is that the enemy gets a vote. we did our best in many cases, but at the end game, we were outfought. we need to draw the lessons from that and go forward. i'll close with one other thought, going back to general milley. when i was supreme ally commander of nato, i would often pick up the phone or have a meeting with my counterpart, the supreme commander of the russian armed forces, general makarov. that's chairman joint staff 101. he is doi the right thing. >> while this is going on, french president macron is urging european leaders to be independent from the uni...

This is how the chain of command operates. and then i think he was also within his ream to call his counterparts in china. perhaps in russia. who knows. when i was supreme ally commander of nato, i would call the supreme commander of the russian armed forces to defuse. but really, what you're trying to do is help the other side keep it in perspective in a way that will avoid some kind of an incident that could lead to the nation's really stumbling into, let's face it, a very serious conflict. i don't envy mark milley those days and i think i know him well. he was one of my generals. >> and we ...

Greek-american. so when i became supreme ally commander the first place i went was not athens, it was ankara. i met with president erdogan, he was prime minister erdogan at the time. he's a serious actor who has bigs a per rations for his nation in the region certainly. and he's playing a kind of tricky hand of card between the united states and russia, and he has purchased, i think, not wisely a high-end russian air defense system, kasie, called the s400, very advanced. we don't like that because it exposes our military hardware, notably the joint strike fighter, to being surveilled by this r...