Minnesota governor holds fire on war policy

Minnesota GOP Gov. Tim Pawlenty, a prospective candidate for his party's 2012 presidential nomination, this morning called for a renewed U.S. commitment to Afghanistan to win the mission, a day after he returned from his fifth trip there.

Pawlenty said President Obama and the rest of the U.S. leadership must do a better job of communicating why the war in Afghanistan remains important and what is happening there. He said he hopes more troops will not be needed than beyond what Obama's surge calls for, but he said the situation might require it.

Rather than bash Obama or his vision as some of his potential primary competitors have done, Pawlenty articulated an agenda for advancing U.S. interests abroad. Asked whether he thinks the military is turning on the administration, he said he has not detected any such sentiment other than what he read in Rolling Stone regarding Gen. Stanley McChrystal.

On immigration, however, Pawlenty took a sharper tack, focusing on the new immigration law in Arizona that the Justice Department is contesting.

"It has been wildly and irresponsibly and recklessly mischaracterized in the press and in the debate -- not by press people, but by people who are quoted by the press, including by the president of the United States, including by high-ranking government officials, who .... admitted that they had never read the law before they spouted off and opened their mouth," Pawlenty said.

Police can stop someone for a violation unrelated to immigration, and if they have a reasonable belief that person is in the country illegally, only then can they ask for documentation, he added.

"And then if you produce a document that is a presumptive legal status, to characterize that as some sort of out-of-bounds approach, is really irresponsible," he said.