SQL - Date comparison, and between command questions/problems.

Hi,
I am trying to run a select statement that will select data from a table for a specified date range, here is the statement:

SELECT count(*) from csmadmin.incident WHERE owner_id LIKE '$useridarray[$i]' AND date_opened BETWEEN '$searchdate1' AND '$searchdate2' AND misc_dropdown3_id = 1707

alternate select statement:
SELECT count(*) from csmadmin.incident WHERE owner_id LIKE '$useridarray[$i]' AND date_opened >= '$searchdate1' AND 'date_opened <= $searchdate2' AND misc_dropdown3_id = 1707


-Basically $searchdate1 is the beggining day of the range and $searchdate2 is the ending date of the range.
-date_opened is a DATE column with the DD-MON-YY format in the incident table


My problem is that i understood that the BETWEEN command is inclusive, it does include the first date, but does not include the end date ($searchdate2). And then the alternate statement does the Exact same, $searchdate1 is included and $searchdate2 is not included. I am not sure if i am missing something, or i am understanding the between command. But i am not sure why the alternate statement does not work either.

Another wierd thing that may be somewhat related is that if i do a simple select statment:
SELECT count(*) from csmadmin.incident WHERE owner_id LIKE '$useridarray[$i]' AND date_opened = '$date'
The above select statement returns 0 rows.

But this select statment returns the correct data:
SELECT count(*) from csmadmin.incident WHERE owner_id LIKE '$useridarray[$i]' AND date_opened LIKE '$date'

$date=04-MAY-04 (like the data in the fields)
and as stated above the date_opened column is a DATE field.