June 3 (Bloomberg) -- Democratic presidential challenger John Kerry said President George W. Bush's administration left U.S. forces ill-prepared for the war on terror, saying he would modernize the military by strengthening Special Forces, improving technology and tasking the National Guard with homeland security.

``We must modernize the world's most powerful military to meet new and different threats,'' Kerry said in remarks prepared for delivery to supporters at the President Harry S. Truman Library in Independence, Missouri. ``Despite all its talk of transforming our military, the Bush administration has done far too little to adapt our forces to the new missions they have to undertake.''

Kerry, 60, is on day 8 of an 11-day swing to convince voters that he has the credentials to better handle foreign policy than Bush, 57. Bush has been slipping in polls on his handling of the war in Iraq. The president is trusted to do a better job of handling terrorism by 52 percent to 39 percent for Kerry in an ABC News-Washington Post poll of 1,005 adults May 20-23. The poll has a margin of error of 3 percentage points.

``It's ironic that Kerry has chosen the Truman library'' to make his speech, Senator Jim Talent, a Missouri Republican, said yesterday on a conference call sponsored by the Bush campaign. ``President Truman was a strong defense president. He made decisions and went on. Senator Kerry's record is just very different. Senator Kerry comes out of the antiwar, anti-defense kind of tradition.''

Truman, vice president under Franklin Delano Roosevelt, took office during World War II after Roosevelt's death. Truman, a Missouri native, made the decision to drop nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki which helped bring the Pacific War to an earlier end. Missouri, which has 11 electoral votes, is one of 17 states that have the potential to tip the November presidential election. Bush won Missouri by a 3.4 percent margin in 2000.

Modernization

``Modernization of the military is something that everybody's been talking about for more than a decade,'' said John Petrocik, chair of the University of Michigan at Columbia's Political Science Department. ``That's the issue to talk about rather than getting into a slugfest on who says they're better on national defense, and doing it at the Truman library loans symbolism to the speech.'' Kerry will unveil the details of his plan to modernize the army in his speech later today.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said during his confirmation hearings in January 2001 that his third main objective in office would be to modernize the military. ``A modern command, control, communications, and intelligence infrastructure is the foundation upon which U.S. military power is employed,'' Rumsfeld told the Senate Armed Forces Committee.

Yet, Kerry said the Bush administration has failed to adequately prepare the U.S. military for the types of combat they have seen in Afghanistan and Iraq. He said the U.S. went into Iraq with hardly any international support and too few troops who ``failed to secure nearly a million tons of conventional weapons now being used against our troops.''

``Today, in the post 9-11 world, we stand at another historic crossroad, at another moment when the old enemy is gone but we face a new threat,'' Kerry said. ``We must change if we are to meet and defeat the danger. We must rebuild our military and prepare it for the risks and tasks of a new era.''

Bush has asked for $407.1 billion for the Defense Department in fiscal 2005, an annual increase of 7 percent and a 35 percent increase since Bush took office, according to the White House website, some of which went toward modernization programs. The Bush campaign pointed to Kerry's record of voting against funding increases to the Defense Department, such as the $87 billion defense supplemental for Iraq and Afghanistan.

Poker Player

``Harry Truman loved to play poker, but John Kerry can't come to Independence and bluff his way through his record of indecisiveness and defense budget cuts,'' said Senator Kit Bond, a Missouri Republican, said in a Bush campaign release.

Kerry also criticized the Pentagon's announcement yesterday that it has halted Army retirements and transfers for soldiers serving in Afghanistan and Iraq until units return home, extending tours for thousands of troops.

``The Administration's answer has been to put band-aids on the problem,'' Kerry said. ``But this has happened on the backs of the men and women who've already fulfilled their obligation to the armed forces and to our country - and it runs counter to the traditions of an all-volunteer military.''

Lieutenant General Franklin Hagenbeck, deputy chief of staff for personnel, said he couldn't estimate how many troops the order affects. When the Army last gave the order, during the 1990 build- up to the Persian Gulf War, it affected 45,000, he told a breakfast meeting of defense reporters in Washington.

The ``stop-loss'' order follows decisions to extend tours for 20,000 soldiers by three months, the shift of a brigade of 3,600 troops from South Korea to Iraq, and the deployment to Iraq of two units used previously to conduct training.

The U.S. plans to keep at least 138,000 troops in Iraq through 2005. The intent to cut the force to between 105,000 and 115,000 troops as political power is turned over to an interim Iraqi government was shelved in the face of renewed insurgencies that produced the deadliest fighting since the last year's war.

Kerry has proposed adding an additional 40,000 troops to help ease the pressure on overextended National Guard and Reserve units serving aboard. Half would be used as military police and for civil affairs, tasks now mainly carried out by reservists, while the other 20,000 would be combat troops, according to Kerry's campaign.

The U.S. Army says it has 496,000 soldiers on active duty, backed by 557,000 reservists and National Guard members. The U.S. House of Representatives on May 20 passed a defense-spending plan for fiscal 2005 that directs the Army and Marines to add 39,000 troops through 2007 to the 670,000 now on active duty.

To contact the reporter on this story: Jay Newton-Small in Kansas City, Missouri at jnewtonsmall@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: June 3, 2004 02:26 EDT