Iraqi base logistics created self-perpetuating contractor waste cycles

Evidence

As the FOB2012 conference neared its end, I asked another conference participant (who requested that I not use his name) whether during his wartime deployments in Iraq he had seen the problem Major Elliott had described—a base with private security guards doing nothing but protecting privately contracted cooks who were doing nothing but cooking for those same private security guards. … “A lot,” he replied. It’s the “self-licking ice cream cone”—by which he meant a self-perpetuating system with no purpose or function except to keep itself going. — David Vine, Base Nation_ How U.S. Military Bases…, 732

Categorization

• CANDY: The ‘self-licking ice cream cone’ is a perfect, quotable coinage for waste in bureaucracies.
• XREF: Echoes Parkinson’s Law and bureaucratic self-perpetuation literature.