ST. PAUL -- I had a chance to talk with Vets for Freedom Chairmen Pete Hegseth this afternoon at a press conference held by Republican members to highlight the success of the surge in Iraq.

Hegseth, who served in the 101st Airborne in Iraq, had just returned from a Samarra, where in 2006 insurgents had destroyed the Golden Mosque, one of the Shiite Muslims' holiest shrines. Even as other turbulent areas of Iraq began to see modest improvement, Hegseth said Samarra, years after the bombing, was "not the place where you saw organic progress."

But on his recent trip, Hegseth said that the security environment had improved to such a degree that he could walk around the city in baseball cap -- something no American would dared to have done just a year ago.

Here's one of Hegseth's dispatches from Samarra:

I asked Hegseth what he thought of McCain's choice of Sarah Palin in terms of national security. Hegseth said, "She understands enough to know that any nation that sends its troops to war should fight for victory."

"She looks at Iraq in terms of how we can succeed, how we can win," he said, adding that having a son in the military shows "she's clearly invested" in winning in Iraq.

I asked how her foreign-policy experience measures up with Barack Obama's. Hegseth replied: "What major difference is there between her and Sen. Obama on foreign policy?"

One of Palin's next big tests will be her debate with Joe Biden on Oct. 2. Biden is clearly someone who can be called an expert on foreign policy and so it will be interesting to see how Palin performs under that kind of pressure.