Ok, here is what works:
/etc/apache2/sites-available file with no parms/redirect (just the top section of the file ):
Here is what it looks like when you need to redirect, in my case i am passing parms and the application does the redirecting:
Hopes this helps someone. Also I am running on Ubuntu 10.04 on an Amazon cloud server.
thanks for the help and pointing me in the right direction.
Ann