to the position of Minister of National Revenue, replacing him in the defence portfolio with former Foreign Minister Peter MacKay. Controversies Afghanistan In May 2005, Canada's practice of transferring persons detained by the Canadian Forces in Afghanistan to units of the Afghan police came under question when some prisoners said they were beaten and abused. O'Connor told Parliament that the International Committee of the Red Cross: "The Red Cross or the Red Crescent is responsible to supervise their treatment once the prisoners are in the hands of the Afghan authorities. If there is something wrong with their treatment, the Red Cross or Red Crescent would inform us and we would take action." This statement was later denied by the ICRC, which stated that it was "informed of the agreement, but ... not a party to it and ... not monitoring the implementation of it." The ICRC also advised that, in accordance with its normal operating procedure, it would not notify any foreign government (Canada included) of abuse found in Afghan prisons. On March 13, O'Connor travelled to Kandahar to meet with Abdul Noorzai of the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission, "look the man in the eyes", and gain assurances that detainees were being supervised. O'Connor subsequently acknowledged in an official release that his statement in Parliament was not true, and that the ICRC was not monitoring detainees and not informing Canada as he claimed. Additional controversy was generated in the week of April 23 when The Globe and Mail reported that 30 Afghan men formerly under Canadian custody alleged they had been tortured by their Afghan captors. Two days later, another Globe story ran on a government report from which "negative references to acts such as torture, abuse, and extra judicial killings were blacked out without an explanation." The difficulties faced by O'Connor were exacerbated after various government ministers and Stephen Harper himself gave apparently conflicting testimony on the existence and nature of the agreement with Afghan forces to supervise detainees. Following these revelations, the opposition parties unanimously demanded O'Connor's resignation; a demand echoed by some press commentators such as Andrew Coyne. Stephen Harper resisted calls for O'Connor's dismissal. O'Connor also faced criticism for remarks that Canada was in Afghanistan as an act of retribution for 9/11. Letter to Donald Rumsfeld In December 2006, O'Connor wrote to outgoing United States Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld praising his "vision", "many achievements",