Herman Cain appeared flustered when asked during an interview Monday about his views on the Obama administration’s support of the Libyan uprising.

When asked his thoughts on the president’s policy during an interview with the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, he leaned back and appeared to search for an answer: “O.K., Libya.”

“President Obama supported the uprising, correct? President Obama called for the removal of Qaddafi — just want to make sure we’re talking about the same thing before I say ‘Yes, I agree,’ or ‘No, I didn’t agree.’ ”

Then, Mr. Cain said he disagrees with the president’s approach “for the following reasons.”

“Nope, that’s a different one,” he said. “I gotta go back and see.”

“I’ve got all this stuff twirling around in my head,” he said.

J.D. Gordon, Cain’s spokesman and national security adviser, said Mr. Cain was asked the question toward the end of a 45-minute session amid a long day of traveling.

“We were all going on four hours’ sleep, so he was tired,” Mr. Gordon said. “When he got the Libya question, it took him a while to get his bearings on it, but he got the answer right.”

Mr. Gordon said Mr. Cain has been spending anywhere from 10 minutes to several hours a day boning up on national security issues, including conversations with some ambassadors. He also said he has spoken to former President George H.W. Bush and former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.

“It’s frankly just a lot of stuff to know in a little bit of time,” he said.

In the interview, Mr. Cain also appeared to shift his position on the issue of collective bargaining for public workers. He told the Journal-Sentinel that he supports collective bargaining rights for public workers.

“But not collective hijacking,” he added. What I mean by that, if they have gotten so much for so many years and it’s going to bankrupt the state, I don’t think that’s good. It appears that in some instances, they really don’t care.”

However, as the paper noted, Mr. Cain said last month that he was “right in the corner of Gov. Scott Walker 100 percent.”

The efforts of Mr. Walker, a Republican, to shrink the collective bargaining rights of public workers set off months of protests at the

state capitol and galvanized conservatives and labor groups nationwide.

His remarks to the newspaper came after he suggested in a magazine interview that most American Muslims were extremists.

Asked by an interviewer for GQ Magazine why he feels that way, Mr. Cain said it was because a “Muslim voice” he knows – who he wouldn’t name – told him it was true.

“There are peaceful Muslims,” Mr. Cain explains, “and there are extremists.”

He added: “I have had one very well-known Muslim voice say to me directly that a majority of Muslims share the extremist views.”

Pressed on whether he believes that is true, Mr. Cain says he believes his anonymous acquaintance is correct because “that’s his community. I can’t tell you his name, but he is a very prominent voice in the Muslim community, and he said that.”

“I find it hard to believe,” Mr. Cain says.

GQ then asked, “But you’re believing it?”

“Yes,” Mr. Cain replied. “Because of the respect that I have for this individual. Because when he told me this, he said he wouldn’t want to be quoted or identified as having said that.”

The interview contains only the latest eyebrow-raising comments by Mr. Cain on Muslims. Earlier, he apologized after declaring he would not be comfortable appointing a Muslim to a cabinet job because of what he claimed were efforts to “ease Sharia law” – Islamic law — and the Muslim faith into the government. He later said that he would in fact consider appointing Muslims to his cabinet.