why do I have to be root to execute I am the owner and group for the file, and I just dont see why root needs to do this... possibly a config problem somewhere??

Your also the owner and or have permissions to the /mnt directory and subdirectory as well?

I am the owner of /mnt/iso but not /mnt... I tried the same to /home/me/iso (a new dir I just made for which I own as well same result -- only root can do that

The loop is a device you don't have perms to. Your perms/owners may be slightly different, but it'd be the same idea. If you did have root.disk, you could add yourself to the 'disk' group or various other things.

ok, added myself to disk group -- same result. do I need an entry in fstab or something, i mean all I am trying to do is mount an iso image... should not be this complicated

If you issued
mount -o loop -t iso9660 filename.iso /home/me/iso
and the loop devices do have group disk (they may not on Fedora) and you've logged out and logged back in and you still get that, then I'm afraid I don't know. A bit of a copout but, at that point, why not su?

I can't log out yet, (I am in the middle of a file xfer) but I did log back in under a different terminal, still wont work, I will try logging out as soon as I can

I dont want to use su to do this (althoug it does work) because A: I intend upon writing this bit of code to a script B: I am trying to better understand this os, and my nature will not allow me to take the easy way out and C: I shouldn't have to -- something is not working right and it will pester me all night (as it has for a couple days now)

Oh well I am sure I will figure it out eventually -- hopefully logging out will do it thx for help everyone so far --