OK, I entered in root shell:
iwconfig eth0 essid skey) ap any

The Kwlan icon at the bottom right of the screen flashed message eth0 is connected. and the righ hand part of it is blue, but I still can not get to google or anything else. I can not edit the profile either. I opened the Kwlan Network Profiles, selected the profile, clicked on Edit, Networkconfig comes up w/Security Settings. The Profile name / ssid is displayed in a dim manner, and I can not make selections on any of the drop downs. Authentication is currently displayed as Plaintext or static WEP, and Encryption is None. All these options are displayed very dimly, and can not be changed.