remote execution problem with ssh

Hello,

I have a peculiar problem i'm trying to track down.  The issue is remote
execution using ssh.  Passwordless logins are already setup and working
fine, the issue is with a command like the following:

/usr/bin/ssh -x DESTINATION_HOST -n COMMAND

will give the error COMMAND not found.  However, excluding the -n, the
above will run fine.  So it seemed that for some reason, the users
.profile was not being sourced and so the PATH, etc variables were not
being setup correctly hence why it couldn't find COMMAND.  So i created
the file /etc/ssh/sshrc that simply calls the users .profile file, but
this didn't change anything either.  However, if i do something stupid,
like,

/usr/bin/ssh -x DESTINATION_HOST -n echo $PATH

then i can see that the path is indeed there.  So it seems that straight
command execution when placed in the background with -n doesn't load up
all the users shell particulars, but otherwise things work the way they
should.

The documentation seems a little sparse in this regard (at least to me).
Can anyone offer some help?  Is this a PAM issue?

Thanks!

Matt