I used the forms wizard to re-build the checkout page that was created with ecart to include validation since it does such a nice job. So, it probably wrote over the existing code when it rewrote the form (I am guessing). Atleast we know if using forms wizard to build a checkout page you will need to change the "United States" value to "US".
I did make the changes indicated and it has now successfully completed the transaction.
Thank you for all the support.