Trump easily manipulated in his war on drugs
The Trump administration recently directed that fishing boats in the Caribbean be blown up, believing that they were carrying cocaine to the United States. It’s part of President Donald Trump’s avowed war on drugs.
But if Trump cares so much about eliminating the illegal drug trade, why did he just pardon the former president of Honduras, who ran what authorities characterized as one of the largest and most violent drug-trafficking conspiracies in the world? Juan Orlando Hernández flooded the United States with cocaine.
All it took for Hernández was to write a fawning letter to Trump and claim his innocence? It is scary that we have a president who is so easily manipulated by praise from both his Cabinet and outsiders.
Trump isn’t just an unethical hypocrite - he is a security risk.
BOB MOSELEY, PEACHTREE CITY
Drug trafficker gets pardoned, others get airstrikes
President Trump’s pardon of Juan Orlando Hernández, the former president of Honduras, stands in stark contrast to President Trump’s direction to fight drug trafficking by directing airstrikes on fishing boats in the Caribbean.
Hernández was the key figure in a drug trafficking scheme who orchestrated a vast conspiracy for drug cartels that flooded the United States with over 400 tons of cocaine. After he was convicted at a three-week jury trial with due process in the United States, Hernández was sentenced to 45 years in prison.
In stark contrast, over 20 airstrikes have been carried out against what the Trump administration calls “narco-terrorists” operating fishing boats. They were killed with no due process. In one reported case, some on board the fishing boats survived the airstrike, but then a follow-up strike was directed to kill them floating in the sea. Helpless survivors were killed rather than being detained and interrogated for information about key figures and sources of the illegal drugs.
The Trump Administration’s policy is that if you are a low-level trafficker in a fishing boat, you will be killed with no due process, but if you are the key figure in a multimillion-dollar drug trafficking conspiracy, you get pardoned after a due process conviction.
ANTHONY L. COCHRAN, ATLANTA
Why not stop the boat and investigate?
There’s a tremendous amount of discussion about the legality of the second strike with respect to a boat blown up by our military, with the second strike directed at killing survivors of the first strike.
Query why the focus isn’t on the first strike as well, and all the other such strikes?
The Trump Administration has decided, via another grossly unreasonable interpretation of law, that we are at war with drug runners in the Caribbean Sea.
How about stopping the boat and investigating?
ALLEN BUCKLEY, SMYRNA
