The House voted down a resolution offered by Dennis Kucinich that would have demanded an end to the intervention in Libya within 15 days Friday, instead passing Speaker John Boehner's, which calls for the White House to justify the war and opposes sending in ground troops. Boehner feared Kucinich had enough votes from both sides of the aisle to pass his measure, so he offered his own to give Republicans a chance to vent their anger about the mission, ABC's Jonathan Karl reports. Still, 87 Republicans voted for Kucinich's bill.

The final vote tally for Boehner's measure was 268 to 145; for Kucinich's, it was 148 to 265. On the House floor, Boehner said Kucinich's measure "goes too far," The Hill's Peter Kasperowicz reports. He acknowledged Obama hadn't formally asked Congress to authorize a war. "We may have differences regarding how we got here, but we cannot turn backs on our troops and our NATO partners who have stuck by us over the last 10 years."

Boehner's resolution was not designed to be taken up by the Senate, unlike Kucinich's. The bills would carry more weight if approved by both chambers, which Rep. Howard Berman noted: "If the members of the House choose to pass the Speaker's 'one-chamber' resolution, it should add one finding, that we declare ourselves to be one big, constitutionally created potted plant."

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Elspeth Reeve