Free Republic

TARAWA, Kiribati (AP) - On the beach at "Bloody Tarawa," where U.S. Marines died by the hundreds, the broken bottles, crushed boxes and plastic bags are now piling up by the millions. Rotting under the equatorial sun, the garbage of an open dump is spreading over a section of World War II's Red Beach, a strip of sand hallowed in American military history. It's a sign of the crisis of solid waste that threatens to overwhelm the tiny atolls of the Pacific, tropical "paradises" whose beauty already is often marred by layers of debris - rubbish with nowhere to go....