I see no reason you couldn't. What leads you to believe you can't?

Oh, wait. Was that the version of RedHat where they intentionally shipped the buggy compiler? ISTR that you could get another compiler package marked explicitly for compiling the kernel. If this is the case, the ``normal'' compiler will be 3.something whereas the kernel compiler will be 2.something, IIRC.
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Bitt Faulk