Politics

Gold Star Spouse Questions JD Vance On ‘Accountability’ For Military’s ‘Failures’ During VP Town Hall

Image not from story. (Screenshot/YouTube/Interesting Times with Ross Douthat)

The husband of an American service member killed March 1 during the Iran War questioned Vice President JD Vance on military “mistakes” and “failures” that led to the deaths of American troops.

Joey Amor, husband of the late Master Sgt. Nicole Amor, pressed Vance about reports that an American base in Kuwait targeted by an Iranian drone was not adequately secured during a town hall hosted by CBS News which aired Saturday night. Master Sgt. Amor was one of six United States Army Reserve soldiers killed at the onset of the war.

“Though the Iranian drone was the weapon that killed my wife, there were a lot of mistakes and a lot of fundamental failures that led up to that,” Amor prefaced. “My wife has told me things before she passed. There are other soldiers that know things that are being quiet about certain aspects of this. There’s a failure in the leadership, and I want to know how this administration is going to start holding those leaders accountable for the actions and the deaths of the soldiers that we honor and that we love.”

After recognizing the “debt of gratitude” by the nation for Amor’s loss, Vance praised her service and promised, “I’m never going to forget about her … and this conversation.”

“When you talk about failures that were that … the administration, the Department of War, whoever you want to say, was implicated in, I want to know about that stuff,” he continued. “Because if there were failures — and I don’t doubt there were … literally the first time I’ve heard of this is this conversation, and I want to fix that stuff — I do not want this stuff to happen.”

“I will say, Joey, we have tried to learn, because warfare has changed, drones are cheap, they’re very deadly, they’re easy to manufacture, and we have changed a lot of our tactics to try to suppress that drone fire, to try to protect our troops, to make it so that more people don’t have to pay the ultimate sacrifice,” he added. “But I want to understand what we can do better and what those soldiers are seeing, because, the part of the problem with this job, this job is an amazing honor, but you live in a bit of a bubble, and sometimes information doesn’t filter up to me. This is an opportunity for it to filter right directly to me, and I promise you, I will take every single failure extremely seriously and will work on it. And I promise you that one of the ways that I’m going to show gratitude to your wife is by taking this seriously and trying to figure out what exactly happened and what exactly we can do better.”

“I know that there are some issues with, for example, just to get into the nitty gritty a little bit, there were issues with how where troops were located that we realized was a huge mistake and that we could do better on, and we have changed that,” he concluded. “Now I’m not going to get into the details because, God forbid, I don’t want the Iranians to learn something else where they’re going to use to target somebody else’s wife or somebody else’s mother, but, man, I promise you, this is not something I’m going to forget. And I want to talk to those soldiers and I want to talk to you to better understand what we can do. I promise you I’ll work on it.”

“Okay,” Amor responded. “God bless you.”

The deaths of the six Americans were not the only difficulty resulting from the drone attack in Kuwait. Multiple service members were sent to the barracks and told to schedule outpatient appointments for serious injuries.

Additional issues raised during the town hall included immigration and the cost of living. Vance is widely viewed as the leading Republican frontrunner, should he decide to run for president in the 2028 race.

Asked by the moderator, “CBS Evening News” anchor Tony Dokoupil, if there was a chance he would not seek the presidency, Vance acknowledged, “Of course there’s a chance.”

“The way that I think about life, big life decisions — my wife will tell you this — is I’m a procrastinator. I hate thinking about it,” he concluded, before adding that he’ll “have to think about it.”