'This is not going well': Ex-CIA officer says 'enormous consequences' may follow Trump's Syria attack

Former CIA operative and intelligence analyst Robert Baer told CNN on Saturday night that President Donald Trump's administration has no idea how complicated the situation in Syria is and that our nation is rushing headlong into a "quagmire" of unintended consequences by engaging the country militarily.

"How confident are you that President Trump will stick with this apparently new position on Syria now?" anchor Ana Cabrera asked Baer.

"It seems to me a big shift here, this attacking Syria," said Baer. "We've never done that before in Syria's history, period. We've always avoided that country."

"There is an ethnic sectarian division there," he explained, " that we were always afraid to touch. This goes back to World War II, in fact. The French could never control that country. And, again, I go back to the fact that Bashar al Assad is a spokesman for the Alawite minority. You can remove him today and you might get somebody that's much worse."

He went on, "I don't think this administration, the Trump administration, understands the complexity of Syria. We are heading into a quagmire of enormous consequences with Iran and Russia on the ground. This is not going well."

State Department officials and others have warned that without a coherent strategy, Thursday night's attack was merely "fancy fireworks." However, the Trump administration has not announced what its policy or strategy decisions will be going forward.

Watch the video, embedded below: