Pol Potty Mouth,
I see you're new to the forum - a hearty welcome.
Firstly, I don't think you'll find many (any) on this forum who don't support the sailors and airmen involved in the operations last night. This isn't really a forum for posting a bunch of 'well dones'; most don't need to receive platitudes in an open forum such as this although the occasional nicety is pleasant enough.
Instead of referring to folks as blinkered fools, maybe if you raise it up a notch you can see that most are mourning the loss of flexibility the UK has in deploying and sustaining operations. The same comments about the carrier (no matter how much people believe it would have been of no value) will be said about MPA and ASTOR (on death row) as we move into embargo and NFZ ops.
It's not about the carrier in isolation, it's about the issue that we now only have the ability to mount land based fixed wing air ops as opposed to inherent flexibility you have if a choice is available.
FB11