On Monday, just as the Trump administration was facing fresh scrutiny over its war on foreign boats allegedly smuggling drugs to the United States, Juan Orlando Hernandez walked free from prison.

The former president of Honduras was at the beginning of a 45-year sentence for trafficking tonnes of cocaine. But US President Donald Trump granted him a full pardon, saying he had been “treated very harshly and unfairly”, citing testimony from unnamed people.

Former Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernandez walked free from prison after being pardoned by Donald Trump.Credit: AP

It instantly made a mockery of Trump’s claims to be protecting Americans from the scourge of drugs by blowing up small boats in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean, or by trying to engineer the ouster of Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro.

“Why would we pardon this guy and then go after Maduro for running drugs into the United States?” asked Republican senator Bill Cassidy. Or, as others put it, why kill the mules on boats but pardon the ringleader?

Hypocrisy is the least of the charges being levelled at the Trump administration. It is now apparent that when the US military first targeted a suspected foreign drug vessel three months ago, it killed the defenceless survivors of its first strike. That would be a war crime.

Or it would be if the US were at war. That is one of the many grey areas of this latest instalment of the unending war on drugs. The Trump administration claims it is involved in an “armed conflict” with drug cartels, but has not sought congressional authorisation for such a war.

A Justice Department memo – which has never been published but was........

© The Sydney Morning Herald