Caught with their drawers down!
Today, the Glatixland Department of Diplomatic Affairs issued a declaration recognizing the legitimacy of the Sawhist forces bravely fighting in Ireland and eastern England. A pledge of mandatory friendship was also made, with Glatixian support offered to the Sawhists by force if necessary.
Johnathan John Johnson, famed Glatixlandwehr General and best-selling author of the book 'Glatixland: Why it's not THAT bad', had this to say:
"We fully intend to support the heroic struggle of the Sawhists, whether they want us to or not. While it's important to take diplomacy into consideration, we prefer not to. Instead, we'll supply them with weapons, vehicles, and glorious Glatixian ordinance, either by dropping them off in a Sawhist port, or dropping them from a plane onto Sawhist forces. Either way, they'll get to see the kind of destructive power we can bring to their cause! Now, we may not know what they actually stand for, what their long-term goals are, or even what their uniforms look like, but that won't prevent us from sending supplies... one way or another."
Shortly after the beginning of preliminary operations, it was discovered that a slight miscalculation had caused significant damage. Due to an issue with the Glatixland Bureau of Central Intelligence and Counter-Sandler Operations, a series of furniture stores sharing the same name as the IKEA alliance were targeted. When the various chain stores, known for high-quality Scandinavian furniture pieces, failed to respond to hails on military frequencies, it was assumed that they represented Coalition Forces, resulting in firebombing raids by the Luftenfighten. Stores both in and outside of Glatixland's borders were hit, causing widespread condemnation from various neighbor states, and fruit baskets have been sent to each in an effort to smooth over the hundreds of millions of dollars worth of damage from the indiscriminate bombing campaigns.
While many in the military have expressed criticism of the mistake, Air Commander Dirk Dickly was of another opinion:
"I strongly believe that the alliance sharing its name with the chain of furniture stores is no mere coincidence. It's likely that 'IKEA' was bankrolling IKEA, and I daresay that we'd have irrefutable evidence of that had it not been completely annihilated in the airstrikes. Seeing as how no one can prove that they WEREN'T in league with the Coalition, I'd call this a win. If the stores were so innocent, then why did we drop 750,000 lbs worth of explosive ordnance on them? Checkmate."
The Glatixian intelligence community has refrained from direct comment, but it's largely believed that the mistake was caused due to the widespread belief among officials that the British Isles don't actually exist. Suffice to say, the rough location of the mythical land of 'Ireland' has been added to maps, and a naval task force dubbed 'Clover' has been deployed to voyage to southern Ireland in an effort to drop off vital supplies to the Sawhists.
