-c argument not recognized

I am running PostgresSQL 8.3.8 on windows XP-64Bit.  I am using psql
client from the PostgreSQL installation and not the Cygwin client.

My issue is that the command line argument "-c command" is not
recognized. For example, if I run (from Cygwin)

psql -h localhost -p 5432 -d $database postgres -c "select count(*)
from  $table_name"

I receive the following output:

psql: warning: extra command-line argument "-c" ignored
psql: warning: extra command-line argument "select count(*) from
$table_name" ignored
Welcome to psql 8.3.8, the PostgreSQL interactive terminal.

Type:  \copyright for distribution terms
       \h for help with SQL commands
       \? for help with psql commands
       \g or terminate with semicolon to execute query
       \q to quit

Warning: Console code page (437) differs from Windows code page (1252)
         8-bit characters might not work correctly. See psql reference
         page "Notes for Windows users" for details.

End output.

If I put the query in a file and run the file from the command line,
then it works fine.  Furthermore, it appears I have all the necessary
priviledges since I can create/delete/modify tables in the database -
as long as the sql code is in a script file.

I will add that this code runs on an XP-32Bit 8.2 install and I
recently installed PostgreSQL on the XP-64Bit machine.

Thanks for any insight you can provide.