Thanks for the tip Martin. I tried it and got carped at that "Can't locate object method 'new' via package "CGI". Huh? From that i decided to create another test that just used CGI and not Image::Magick. (see reworded question)
RESULT OF "use CGI": Everything worked great for all file uploads. The cgi object was created and held the correct form info.
RESULT OF "use CGI::Carp": CGI::Carp always gives the error above...that it can't located the 'new' package. I guess that means that my webhost has more problems with their perl modules that just image::magick...if cgi::carp always fails but cgi alone doesn't!?