Why do I have wpasupplicant installed if I don't have a wifi interface?

[Rick Thomas <rbthomas@pobox.com>]

Can anybody tell me why I have wpasupplicant installed, even though I  
don't have a wifi interface on this machine?

The machine has a single 10/100 twisted pair ethernet interface which  
is configured "static" in the /etc/network/interfaces file.  It does  
not have any wifi hardware, and (consequently?) no wifi mentioned in  
interfaces...

If I try to deinstall wpasuplicant, it then wants to also remove  
network-manager and network-manager-gnome.  Should I just let it?   
What would be the consequences if I do?

Thanks!

Rick