So Angelina Jolie is going on the O’Reilly Factor tonight.

She has become an advocate for children and adoption and you can’t help but applaud her for that. For me there’s no greater act of kindness than adopting a child.

But she has also put herself out there in the political realm and so she can’t really complain when people take issue with what she says or does, as they do any public figure. She has to endure complaints from the right and left and respond in kind, if she truly wants to be a player and make a difference.

I’m not talking about answering questions like what’s up with Maddox and Zahara. That’s a private matter. (Although I will say, Tom Cruise adopted two kids a long time ago and you never heard much about it, never saw him taking them out in the public eye. They were truly private, as I imagine these celebrity families can figure out how to be if they truly want to be.)

She attends conferences of the WTO; she’s a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, along with Dick Cheney, Henry Kissinger, ExxonMobil, Halliburton and Lockheed Martin.

So if she really wants to help children, then why, I wonder, isn’t she talking about what’s happening to the children in Iraq? What more powerful statement could she make right now, in her quest for further children for adoption, than to adopt a child orphaned in this brutal, senseless military occupation?

When she goes on O’Reilly, will she talk about the problems faced by children here in this country? Their lack of decent education and health care? The hundreds of thousands of homeless kids living here, in the richest country in the world?

I would guess that her appearance on O’Reilly is somehow connected to Fox News being banned from her movie premiere. But barring the press from an event isn’t half as powerful as holding their feet to the fire when you’re sitting in their TV studio. If Angelina Jolie really wants to make a difference, she’ll do just that when she faces off with the king of neo-con media tonight. Come on Angie. Do it for the kids.

And now for a trip down memory lane...

Remarks by Vice President Dick Cheney Before the Council on Foreign Relations, New York Times, February 16, 2002

From the Q and A section:

Q: I'm surprised that nobody's asked you about Iraq, and there seems to be a growing --

VICE PRESIDENT CHENEY: (Chuckles.) I am too! (Laughter.)

Q: There seems to be a growing consensus not only within the administration, but throughout the city here [Washington], that the time is coming that we will take on Iraq, but that consensus really doesn't extend to our allies in Europe or in the Arab world. First of all, does that trouble you? And what can the administration do to build greater international support for a more aggressive policy?

VICE PRESIDENT CHENEY: Iraq is clearly, as—again, as the president pointed out in his State of the Union speech, very much of concern. And not only do they have a robust set of programs to develop their own weapons of mass destruction; this is a place that's used it. You know, Saddam used chemical agents on the Iranians during the Iran-Iraq war, and on his own people when he used them against the Kurds in times past. And we know he drove the inspectors out three years ago, and we know he has been actively and aggressively doing everything he can to enhance his capabilities.

He has in the past had some dealings with terrorists, clearly. Abu Nidal for a long time operated out of Baghdad. And so if you were to put together a list of—a list of states given our concern of weapons of mass destruction, states that have supported terrorists in the past or have links and ties, clearly that's got to be one we focus on.

The prospect of how we deal with sort of what comes next as to where we're going from here in terms of the overall war on terror, there are several things, I guess, several—an important point to keep in mind is that it is a multifaceted approach. And some of it will be visible and public, as when we went into Afghanistan to take out the Taliban; other aspects of it may never see the light of day, probably shouldn't. You're clearly going to have to deal in the shadows, to some extent, on some of these areas.

And in the pursuit of our objectives, the president's made it clear that this will be a priority, that we will use all the means at our disposal—meaning military, diplomatic, intelligence, et cetera—to address these concerns. And I would hope that any nation out there that finds itself contemplating dealing with those organizations or developing that kind of capability will think twice about whether or not they want to face the possible wrath of the United States and the kind of the threat that that would represent.”