Indeed not, and I did not use the word "owe". In fact, I should not have used the word "promise". It is an Italianism, in that in Italian the cognate has a less binding sense than in English.

As for my tone, I am still seething at an encounter with a so-called American Catholic who perverted everything I said and quite deliberately, and with the evidence in front of her, ascribed to me views that I have denied for years, in public, and in the plainest and most vernacular possible English. My experience of the American anti-health-care movement is generally bad, and I do not think I am going to meet many reasonable or even sincere people there.