Passing password in ssh

[tony.chamberlain@xxxxxxxxx]

Any way to pass a password (on command line) in SSH?

Sure you can use the ssh-keygen and set up public and
private keys and all that.  Problem is, in batch mode
something can go wrong.  You might not have the entry
in the hosts file, or something.  And then your batch program
will freeze waiting for a password or human response to type 
"yes".  It would be good to do like ssh -l login -p password blah blah blah,
but I can't figure out how.

A second question (acutally alternative).  Any other way to do this:

     ssh -l login host cmd

That is, execute a command on a remote host, other than ssh?
Might be an alternative.