Not 10 minutes after I posted this question, another wiser one from the office stumbled upon this solutions so I thought I would share it here for those in need.

ok, here's what I did to get Simple XML working on Fedora Core 2

There is a bug in Fedora Core 2 in the file ParserDetails.ini is not created by the install. It also is not created during the SAX install.

1) run the following line to fix the ini file:

perl -MXML::SAX -e "XML::SAX->add_parser(q(XML::SAX::PurePerl))->save_parsers()"

2) reinstall XML::SAX::Expat parser to correct its entry in the ini file:

perl -MCPAN -e shell cpan>force install XML::SAX::Expat that's it. took me forever to get this worked out :)