House members approved a nonbinding resolution expressing support for the U.S. troops serving in Iraq while opposing Bush's plan to send 21,500 more combat troops into the war.

Seventeen Republicans -- not nearly as many as some had predicted -- joined 229 Democrats in favor of the resolution. Two Democrats and 180 Republicans voted against it.

"Today we've had a historic victory for the American people. Let's savor that and see what impact it has on the president and his strategy,'' House Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-San Francisco, said after the vote.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., hoping to ride the House's momentum, scheduled a vote today to try to break the partisan deadlock in the Senate over the war. Reid wants the Senate to consider the House-passed resolution.

Republicans earlier blocked a vote on a more wide-ranging bipartisan resolution against Bush's plan that had been sponsored by Sen. John Warner, R-Va., a former Navy secretary and past chairman of the Armed Services Committee.

The minority leader, Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., told reporters Friday that he remains confident he can muster enough Republicans to block Reid's effort today -- when the Senate was expected to begin its Presidents Day recess. Democrats hold a 51-49 majority in the Senate, but 60 votes are needed to overcome the filibuster and allow a vote on the resolution opposing the troop increase.

The House vote came after almost 45 hours of debate in which 392 members spoke on the floor of the chamber. Pelosi, in one of the final speeches, reiterated her position that the 97-word resolution is just the start of the Democratic effort to end the war.

"The passage of this legislation will signal a change in direction in Iraq that will end the fighting and bring our troops home,'' Pelosi said.

Democrats throughout the debate emphasized the administration's policy mistakes during the past four years that have led to the deaths of more than 3,100 American military personnel, cost taxpayers more than $400 billion and left U.S. troops stuck in a sectarian civil war.

Rep. Paul Hodes of New Hampshire, one of the Democratic freshmen who ousted a GOP incumbent in November on an anti-war platform, said Congress must rein in the president. "The administration is in a parallel universe of its own creation,'' Hodes said.

The Republicans' final speaker was Rep. Sam Johnson of Texas, who was a prisoner of war for seven years in Vietnam. He said Democrats, despite their claims, are undercutting America's armed forces.

"The pain inflicted by your country's indifference is tenfold that inflicted by your captors,'' he said, referring to his treatment by the Vietnamese and the growth at home of an anti-war movement.

Democratic leaders, while savoring the victory, pointed toward their next effort against the war: legislation pushed by one of Pelosi's closest allies, Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., that will seek to limit Bush's ability to deploy more troops to Iraq.

Murtha, the chairman of the panel overseeing military spending, plans next month to attach his proposals as conditions to Bush's latest $100 billion spending request to pay for the war through Sept. 30. Murtha said he wants to require that no units be sent to Iraq until fully trained and equipped, which would include providing the latest armored protection against roadside bombs.

Murtha also wants to require that military units get more time at home before they can be redeployed to Iraq and to end the practice of "stop loss,'' in which miliary personnel are kept on active duty past their date for leaving the service.

Bush, who had no comment after Friday's vote, has said the nonbinding resolution wouldn't deter him from going forward with the troop increase.

The Associated Press reported that troops of the Army's 82nd Airborne already have arrived in Iraq. Another brigade is in Kuwait, undergoing final training before proceeding to Iraq. Three more brigades are ticketed for the Baghdad area, one each in March, April and May. In addition, the Pentagon is sending two Marine battalions to Anbar province in the western part of the country, the heart of the Sunni insurgency.

White House spokesman Tony Snow said Murtha's proposals to require better training and equipment as well as longer times between deployments were dangerous.

"Anything that is going to tie the hands of military commanders and deny both the funds and flexibility they're going to need, he will take a dim view of,'' Snow said of the president.

"We're just not going to get into trying to characterize a specific position about a bill that has yet to see the light of day," Snow added.

While the resolution doesn't require Bush to do anything, its proponents hope it sends him a strong signal that he should sit down with the Congress' Democratic leaders to discuss new strategy.

Rep. Tom Lantos, D-San Mateo, one of the resolution's bipartisan co-sponsors, said calling the resolution nonbinding ignores its real power.

"What could be more binding on the president than the view of the elected representatives of the American people?'' asked Lantos, who chairs the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

E-mail Edward Epstein at eepstein@sfchronicle.com.

This article appeared on page A - 10 of the San Francisco Chronicle