Redhat 5.2 system daemons (e.g. sendmail, etc.) cannot be aborted/skipped by hitting Ctrl-C while they are starting up like you can on FreeBSD. Background: Several system daemons in addition to sendmail hang for several minutes when DNS is not properly configured (for example, in the process of setting up a new Redhat box), so without being able to skip these daemons on startup, the user has to wait 10-15 minutes before the machine is usable again, or perform an unsafe boot ("hit the reset button") and risk file system corruption. You ought to be able to hit Ctrl-C on the console to terminate these processes and continue boot-up without having to wait 1/4 hour to get to the prompt.
Thank you for the suggestion. It has been noted and will be considered for future Red Hat releases.