During a CBS News Town HallA man whose wife was one of the first U.S. service members to die in the U.S.-Iran war asked Vice President JD Vance if the Trump administration would hold people accountable for “mistakes” and “fundamental failures.”
Staff Sgt. Nicole Amormember of the United States Army Reserve from Minnesota, was one of six people killed in an Iranian drone attack on an outpost in Kuwait on March 1 – a day after the United States began striking Iran. It was the deadliest attack on U.S. forces during the Iran War.
Since then, families of those affected by the attack have questioned whether the U.S. military did enough to protect Americans stationed at the port of Shuaiba, Kuwait. CBS News has reported over concerns that the facility was insufficiently fortified and lacked capabilities to shoot down incoming drones, and that the The army chose not to rebase its troops further from Iran and ignored a request to strengthen medical support.
Nicole Amor’s husband, Joey Amor, questioned the vice president about the attack during a “Things That Matter” town hall hosted by “CBS Evening News” anchor Tony Dokoupil that aired Saturday night.
“Although the Iranian drone was the weapon that killed my wife, there were a lot of mistakes and a lot of fundamental failures that led to that,” Amor said, adding that “my wife told me things before she died.”
He continued: “There is a failure of leadership. And I want to know how this administration is going to begin to hold these leaders accountable for the actions and deaths of the soldiers we honor and love.”
Vance responded by calling Nicole Amor “a valuable human being who served her country honorably” and said, “I want to know” about any failures that may have taken place.
“Because if there have been failures, and I have no doubt about it, I…literally the first time I’m hearing about this is this conversation, and I want to fix this stuff. I don’t want that to happen,” Vance told Amor, later adding that as vice president, “you live in a kind of bubble” and “sometimes the information doesn’t get to me.”
Vance promised to “determine what exactly happened and what we can do better.”
The vice president said some changes were already underway.
He noted that cheap, easy-to-make drones have transformed warfare and that “we’ve changed a lot of our tactics to try to suppress these drone strikes, to try to protect our troops so that more people don’t have to pay the ultimate sacrifice.”
Vance also acknowledged, “There are some issues with…troop placement that we realized was a huge mistake and we could do better.” And we changed that.
“Now I’m not going to go into detail, because God forbid I don’t want the Iranians to learn anything else (that they) will use to target someone else’s wife or mother,” Vance said. “But man, I promise you, this isn’t something I’m going to forget. And I want to talk to these soldiers, and I want to talk to you to better understand what we can do.”
Watch the full episode of “Things That Matter: A Town Hall with Vice President JD Vance » streaming on Paramount+YouTube, CBS News 24/7 and CBSNews.com.
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