{"id":14250,"date":"2012-02-24T19:58:15","date_gmt":"2012-02-25T03:58:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/?p=14250"},"modified":"2012-02-24T20:19:02","modified_gmt":"2012-02-25T04:19:02","slug":"buy-our-rice-ingrates","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2012\/02\/24\/buy-our-rice-ingrates\/","title":{"rendered":"Buy Our Rice, Ingrates!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Fresh off <a href=\"http:\/\/news.antiwar.com\/2012\/02\/23\/us-rice-farmers-livid-as-iraqis-not-forced-to-buy-from-them\/\">yesterday&#8217;s story of US rice farmers<\/a> being &#8220;furious&#8221; that Iraqis are buying their rice from other countries now that the US occupation is over, twelve members of Congress have fired off a letter to Iraq&#8217;s Trade Minister pressing for him to get Iraqis back on the American long-grain variety.<\/p>\n<p>Rep. Ted Poe (R &#8211; TX), one of the Congressmen in question, said the Iraqis should be more grateful. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.seattlepi.com\/news\/article\/Congress-members-urge-Iraq-to-buy-US-rice-3359177.php\">&#8220;We liberated their country for one thing,&#8221; Poe insisted<\/a>, adding that &#8220;we would think they would consider the United States in trade since we spent billions of dollars not only to liberate their country, but to rebuild their infrastructure.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Interestingly, the Congressional letter makes a complaint seemingly opposite to the complaint made by American farmers yesterday. The farmers protested that Iraq&#8217;s Trade Ministry had lowered standards to the point where Uruguay and other nations suddenly had access to the market. The letter, by contrast, claims Iraq&#8217;s standards are &#8220;too high&#8221; and put American companies at a disadvantage by requiring them to bag up all the rice before they ship it out.<\/p>\n<p>Iraq&#8217;s Trade Ministry has said that much of the shift is a function of the Iraqi public preferring Basmati rice, which the US doesn&#8217;t produce. There is no law keeping the US out of Iraq&#8217;s rice market, but American farmers simply aren&#8217;t growing the right kind of rice for the Iraqi dinner plate.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Fresh off yesterday&#8217;s story of US rice farmers being &#8220;furious&#8221; that Iraqis are buying their rice from other countries now that the US occupation is over, twelve members of Congress have fired off a letter to Iraq&#8217;s Trade Minister pressing for him to get Iraqis back on the American long-grain variety. Rep. Ted Poe (R [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":32,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[687],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-14250","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-iraq"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14250","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/32"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14250"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14250\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14253,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14250\/revisions\/14253"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14250"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14250"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14250"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=14250"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}