By JOSHUA GOODMAN, ERIC TUCKER and DAVID KLEPPER, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — Under President Donald Trump, the drug war is looking a lot like the war on terror.

To support strikes against Latin American gangs and drug cartels, the Trump administration is relying on a legal argument that gained traction after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, which allowed U.S. authorities to use lethal force against al-Qaida combatants who attacked the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

The criminal groups now being targeted by U.S. strikes are a very different foe, however, spawned in the prisons of Venezuela, and fueled not by anti-Western ideology but by drug trafficking and other illicit enterprises.

Trump’s use of overwhelming military force to combat such groups and authorization of covert a

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