Officer and a Gentleman? 50 Women Would Disagree

[Guest Anglesault]

He proposed to Karen. He proposed to Yana. He proposed to Monica. He proposed to Kathy. He proposed to Sarah. He proposed to Susan. He proposed to Vicki. He proposed to Colette.

 

You get the idea.

 

Col. Kassem Saleh of the United States Army was part of the force that fought the Taliban in Afghanistan, a task fraught with peril and often lonely. But apparently not that lonely.

 

 

The Army said yesterday that it was looking into allegations that he managed to line up dozens of prospective wives in the United States and Canada, women he met through Internet dating services. Virtually all of them posted advertisements on a site called tallpersonals.com, which specializes in men and women who are taller than average.

 

In recent days, as his chronic courting has come to light, some of the women have compiled a list of more than 50 women who were romanced by him. The women are heartbroken and intent on revenge. They have complained to the Army that they want to see him punished and even thrown in jail. It's unclear at this point if his behavior, if proven true, violates either criminal law or Army regulations.

 

Col. Roger King, a spokesman for the Army's 18th Airborne Corps at Fort Bragg, N.C., where Colonel Saleh is now stationed, confirmed that the Army was investigating the matter and that Colonel Saleh had no comment on the allegations.

 

According to Colonel King, Colonel Saleh is a 29-year Army veteran who headed reconstruction and humanitarian efforts for the American-led military operation in Afghanistan until his tour ended last month. Last July, he led a preliminary investigation into airstrikes on a compound in southern Afghanistan where a late-night, pre-wedding party was going on, an attack that resulted in scores of civilians being killed or wounded.

 

Through his efforts, the duped women maintain, he managed to attract someone from states all around the country, including Alaska and Hawaii, and two from Canada. They range in age from 33 to 57. One encountered him as long ago as 1998, and others as recently as March. A few of them met him through either christiansingles.com or match.com, but tallpersonals.com was the most productive source. A few actually met him in person, some of the women said.

 

It's not that the colonel, who is 50 (though he gave various ages to the women) needs a wife. He is already married, the women said.

 

The matter began to unravel after a television station in Washington, KNDU-TV, showed a segment in April about a woman in Pasco, Wash., who was engaged to Colonel Saleh and awaiting his return from overseas. That story was posted on the MSNBC Web site. Soon, other women who thought they were Colonel Saleh's fiancée called KNDU. According to these women, Colonel Saleh was a two-timer of massive proportions. They now derisively refer to him as "Kassanova."

 

Robin Solod, 43, lives in Manhattan and is studying to become a real estate broker. For four years, she said she had worked the Internet dating scene, looking for a man who would tell her he would be by to pick her up on his motorcycle. Instead, she found men who owned bird collections or played golf.

 

Last November, she placed an ad on tallpersonals (she is six feet tall) and Colonel Saleh answered. "He responded with a beautifully romantic e-mail," she said. "He said I was beautiful, I sounded wonderful. He wanted to get to know me."

 

She said he told her he was fighting in Afghanistan. A week later, he called her by satellite phone, saying that he was in a safe house in Afghanistan. "He sounded like Don Johnson," she said. He wrote her daily e-mail messages and made phone calls to her that sounded dangerously exciting: "Baby, I love you . . . vehicle coming!"

 

"What proceeded were the most intoxicating love letters," she said. "He wrote better than Yeats. He wrote better than Shakespeare. He totally intoxicated you with his feelings: `Oh, baby, I want to tell you how much I miss you.' `I can't wait to get home to you.' "

 

In one e-mail message that she provided, he wrote: "You are my world, my life, my love and my universe. It's like my mother used to say to me in Arabic when I was a little boy. Yi Yunni (my eyes), Ya hyyetti (my love), Ya elbee (my heart), and Ya umree (my life). She used to sing it to me so I would fall asleep in our one-bedroom apartment in the slums of Brooklyn."

 

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In fact, one of the other women said he mainly recycled letters he got from one woman and sent them on to the others. Or he would cut and paste letters he received from different women and create new ones that went out in bulk.

 

Ms. Solod said he told her he had been divorced 10 years ago and had not had a relationship since. Another woman said he referred to himself as the Warrior Monk, because he had not had sex in 10 years. He was waiting for the one perfect woman.

 

"There was this connection I felt," Ms. Solod said. "Unfortunately, there were 50 of us who felt it."

 

Two months ago, she said, he called her and proposed. She said he told her: "You're the most significant woman I've met. You're just like my mother."

 

Even though she had never seen him, she immediately agreed to marry him. "Crazy, right?" she said, recalling the moment.

 

She read the MSNBC dispatch at the end of April. "I almost had a heart attack," she said. "I e-mailed him within one second. He e-mailed me back within one second. He said, `Don't be silly, she's only a friend.' "

 

She managed to track down the woman in Washington and found out the truth. She said one woman e-mailed some of the others, saying she tried to commit suicide last week. "We're all trying to support her," Ms. Solod said.

 

Sarah Calder, 33, lives in the small town of Calais, Me., where she works as production manager of her family-owned newspaper, The Calais Advertiser. He responded to her ad on tallpersonals 15 months ago, and proposed to her last November.

 

Ms. Calder also said that she was captivated by the sweet talk in his e-mail messages and phone calls. Sometimes he wrote to her 10 or 12 times a day. Other times, she said, he told her she wouldn't be hearing from him for a week or so. He had to go into the hills and chase terrorists.

 

It is unclear how tall Colonel Saleh is. Women who have met him told some of the others that he was 5-foot-9 or 5-10, and possibly didn't even qualify for tallpersonals. In his mushy e-mail messages, he told the women he was 6-3 or 6-5.

 

Ms. Calder was expecting to meet him in person for the first time in the coming days, and she said he called her a few weeks ago and mentioned that he had shrunk to six feet tall because of repeated parachute jumps. "I was very wary," she said. "I know people can injure their backs. I found it strange."

 

She only learned about the colonel's antics on Saturday, after she came home from doing dog rescues and found 49 e-mail messages on her computer. "They were all pertaining to Kass," she said. "I cried and cried and was totally heartbroken."

 

She said some of the other women had received engagement rings and were actually planning weddings. She had been shopping for a wedding dress herself, but fortunately hadn't bought it yet.

 

Like others, Ms. Calder had sent him presents. She even had the local elementary school create handmade Valentine's Day cards to mail to his unit. He later sent photographs of the troops enjoying the cards.

 

"He's a sick individual that deserves jail time," she said.

 

She recognizes that it seems absurd to agree to marry someone who you had never met in person, to trust a relationship built on e-mail messages and trans-Atlantic phone calls. But she said you had to be there and feel the seductive pull of his flowery words.

 

"We are not a group of stupid, naïve women," she said. "We are bright, intellectual, professional women. I can't tell you how much he wooed us with his words. He made us feel like goddesses, fairy princesses, Cinderellas. We had all found our Superman, our knight in shining armor."

 

I don't quite understand....

 

They accepted a marriage propossal from a man they never met?

Edited June 13, 2003 by Anglesault

[Guest Bannable Offense]

This is why trying to find significant others through the Internet is hardly ever a good idea.

[rising up out of the back seat-nuh 0]

You've gotta feel sorry for those women if they fall in love with a man they've never met. But at the same time, the guys a grade A dick for fucking with their emotions like that.

[Guest Vyce]

Well, I know this is somewhat sociopathic, but frankly I found this story hilarious.

 

"Warrior Monk" indeed.

[Guest kkktookmybabyaway]

Maybe he's a mormon...

[Guest Vitamin X]

Or Arabic, which implying by his name he is...

[Guest CoreyLazarus416]

Meh. Smack him a few times with your hand, and then tell the women to go outside like most normal "looking-for-love" folks do.