Joey Amor’s wife was killed by an Iranian drone in Kuwait on the second day of the Iran war. On Saturday night, on national TV, he asked Vice President JD Vance who would be held responsible. “There were a lot of mistakes and a lot of fundamental failures that led up to that,” Amor said at a CBS News town hall. “There’s a failure in the leadership.”
Vance’s answer: “This literally is the first time I’ve heard of this.” As vice president, he said, “you live in a bit of a bubble” and “sometimes information doesn’t filter up to me,” CBS News reported.
Who was Master Sgt. Nicole Amor?
An Army Reserve soldier from White Bear Lake, Minnesota, FOX 9 reported. She was killed March 1 at Kuwait’s Port of Shuaiba, one day after the U.S. began bombing Iran, in a drone attack that killed six. It’s still the deadliest single attack on U.S. forces in the war. Her husband says she told him things before she died, and that other soldiers “know things” they aren’t saying.
What did Vance say to Joey Amor?
He called Nicole Amor “a precious human being who served her country honorably” and promised to “figure out what exactly happened and what exactly we can do better.” He said the military has “changed a lot of our tactics” to stop drone fire and admitted how troops were positioned was “a huge mistake” that’s since been changed. “This is not something I’m gonna forget,” he said, adding that he wants to talk with Amor and the soldiers involved.
Critics online said it was a bad moment for a man often mentioned as a 2028 front-runner: nearly eight months into a war, the vice president was hearing about failures in its deadliest attack for the first time on a TV stage.
Did Vance say the U.S. won the Iran war?
Sort of. When CBS anchor Tony Dokoupil asked why the U.S. hasn’t won decisively, Vance said, “in some ways we have won decisively, but the Iranians, the enemy gets a vote here, and they have responded in certain ways,” Mediaite reported. He argued U.S. strikes destroyed Iran’s nuclear program, but said the U.S. still needs a long-term, verifiable promise that Iran won’t rebuild it. Meanwhile, ships are still being attacked in the Strait of Hormuz, and oil topped $100 last week.
The BeezLoop Take
Vance handled the human part with some grace. He didn’t argue, he praised Nicole Amor’s service and he promised to follow up. But “first time I’ve heard of this” is a hard answer to accept seven months after the war’s deadliest attack. If the vice president doesn’t know what went wrong in Kuwait, who in this administration does?
Amor is asking what every military family deserves to know: was his wife’s death preventable, and is anyone accountable? Vance admitted troop positioning was “a huge mistake.” That admission should come with names, a review and a public report.
The open question: will Vance actually follow up with Joey Amor, and will the Pentagon release what it found about the Port of Shuaiba attack?
Also on BeezLoop: Trump ruled out a nuclear strike on Iran but not the ‘mother of all bombs’, and Trump’s approval hit a second-term low in a new NBC poll.
Sources: CBS News · FOX 9 Minneapolis · Mediaite · CBS News (video)
