Jumpin’ Joe Lieberman continues to wave the war banner, yanking out the old Nazi stand-ins one more time on CNN’s State of the Union yesterday to push for continued intervention — and what sure sounds like more U.S combat troops — in Afghanistan:

LIEBERMAN: …This is as if we were in the end of the second world war, democracy was beginning to take route in Germany and the Nazis started an offensive to take the country back. That’s what the Taliban is doing. So right now, the president has put a new team in charge, and they’re good. General McChrystal, Ambassador Eikenberry, he’s committed to 21,000 more troops. They’re beginning to arrive. They’re making a difference, those marines, in southern Afghanistan under General Larry Nicholson, doing a great job in turning the tide.

(HOST JOHN) KING: Do you see any political pressure on General McChrystal to ratchet down those numbers, to not ask for a significant number of more troops?

LIEBERMAN: I haven’t seen any. I sure hope there’s not. If there’s a lesson we should’ve learned from Iraq, some of the pressure that was put on our generals there not to ask for what they thought they needed to win meant that we lost a lot of lives, spent a lot of money. My own opinion coming back from Afghanistan with a new team, new strategy, we ought to take the option that General McChrystal gives us that has the least risk.

In other words, don’t dribble it out, don’t go for incrementalism. That’s a lesson we learned in Iraq. Frankly it’s a lesson we learned a long time ago in Vietnam that give our troops and our civilians there State Department, economic assistance, people, the support that they need as quickly as we can get it to them, and then demand that the Afghan government do the same. Raise the number of security forces that they have in the battle and produce a good government for their people.

Let’s put aside Lieberman’s curious references to Marines “turning the tide” in Helmand (did he not listen to  Adm. Mullen on the same show?) and the “lessons” we supposedly learned from Iraq, given that last week’s bombings seem to present the biggest, loudest ones so far, and not in the way he and fellow warhawks have been bloviating about for the last year. Lieberman is on the losing end of this debate and he knows it. McChrystal is likely to ask for more troops after finishing his much-awaited review, and considering the pliancy of this congress in the past, he will probably get them. Maybe. Everyone seems to be bracing for a fight, pointing to plummeting approval ratings for the war overall.

But a little noted news item in this weekend’s Wall Street Journal might point the way for Lieberman and McChrystal, et al, to have their war and man it too (on the QT). Seems like they’ve been doing it already. According to the report, private contractors now outnumber U.S troops in Afghanistan. This heretofore unknown statistic is somewhat staggering: as of June 30, there were almost 74,000 civilians contracted by the military, compared to the roughly 58,000 U.S soldiers there. When I wrote about this in May, I pointed to estimates of 70,000 contractors by 2010.

Without the contractors, the story goes, the administration wouldn’t be able to sustain its current, nor long-term presence in Afghanistan. Just like in Iraq, which still has 120,000 contractors. That’s why huge sums of taxpayer dollars keep flowing to contractors with mile-long allegations and charges of fraud and abuse, like the $15 billion dollar package that just went in part to Dyncorp International to build U.S bases and “other infrastructure” in Afghanistan, for an occupation that our President has insisted won’t be open-ended. Now we need them more than they need us. Not a very good position to be in. But as far as Mr. Lieberman is concerned, whatever it takes to stay the course. We wouldn’t want another Vietnam, would we?