Shell Programming and Scripting

I'm having an interesting problem, I'm pretty much a linux newbie, and my past 3 hours of google searching is not helping :P

So I'm trying to make an autologin script using expect, but whenever I use expect, it breaks everything not explicitly covered under expect.

Example, blahblahs added to keep discretion, only top part of if statement posted due to it breaking on the actual IF statement itself:

[code]
#!/usr/bin/expect

set site [lindex $argv 0]

if [ `cat key_hosts | grep $site` ]; then
spawn scp bin/quick_verify.sh root@(blahblah).$site.(blahblah).net:
expect "Password:"
send "(blahblah)\n"
spawn ssh root@(blahblah).$site.(blahblah).net
expect "Password:"
send "(blahblah)\n"
interact

When I run the program, I get the following results:

invalid command name "`cat"
while executing
"`cat key_hosts | grep $site` "
invoked from within
"if [ `cat key_hosts | grep $site` ]"
(file "/home/bmartin/bin/s.bak" line 6)

And yes I'm probably making a huge noob mistake, but there's nothing documenting what the noob mistake I'm making is! help! :P Also, when I try to echo the contents to a file instead, it says echo isn't a valid command, I'm so lost \_(O.o)_/

Thanks in advance.

Also as an aside, when I remove the expect, everything starts working agian, except the expect commands ofc.

no ideas?