Is that the government that owns, it though? And do we own any of their debt?
Historically, most of our debt has been financed domestically. Recently though, this has changed dramatically.
At the end of 2004, foreign central banks owned $1.2 trillion of the $1.9 trillion of Treasury bonds, bills and notes owned by foreigners, 60 percent of the total.
Most of this is being by purchased by central banks, especially by China and Japan, to control the value of their currencies vs. the dollar and protect their export driven economies.
Here's and excellent article from Bruce Bartlett on this very subject.
As for American's buying foreign debt...I don't really know the answer to that. Here's more from the article:
Because the dollar is the dominant world currency, the one in which the bulk of world trade takes place, including all transactions in the oil market, the U.S. has the luxury of ignoring the international value of the dollar. It goes up or down on the free market, largely free of intervention by the Treasury Department.
In 2003, foreigners bought $829 billion worth of US bonds, while Americans increased their ownership of foreign financial assets by $283 billion. I don't know how much of that $283 billion invested was in bonds and how much was in stocks. The difference ($546 billion) was about equal to the current account deficit for that year.