By Brad Ryan, ABC
Photo: AFP / Jim Watson
Analysis: US President Donald Trump says his country is at war with drug-smuggling "narco-terrorists".
His military has been controversially bombing boats in the Caribbean - killing scores of people - in what the White House describes as national "self-defence" against traffickers.
Trump is threatening military action against Venezuela next. He has also said he would be "proud" to strike targets in Mexico.
"Whatever we have to do to stop the drugs," he said when the ABC asked him about this recently.
At the same time, the US president has just pardoned and released a man who was in jail for overseeing one of the world's worst drug conspiracies.
Juan Orlando Hernandez used his position as the president of Honduras to help flood the US with billions of hits of cocaine, a New York court was told last year.
Over eight years in power from 2014, Hernandez ran Honduras "as a narco-state where violent drug traffickers were allowed to operate with virtual impunity", according to the US's attorney-general at the time, Merrick Garland.
He had made himself millions of dollars in drug-money bribes in the process, government prosecutors argued in court.
A jury agreed, finding Hernandez guilty of drug trafficking and related weapons offences.
He was sentenced to 45 years
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