I think many, if not most, educated Americans and Israelis would certainly agree with what you just said regarding allies. Sobran goes way, way beyond that into anti-Semetism, and that tends to invalidate anything else he may have to say. When hatred is obvious anything he said is contaminated by our knowledge of his hatred.
Our connection with Israel often has much of the quality of an "entangling alliance".
I think the reason it seems that way is because our interests ARE so directly intertwined at the moment. From an Israeli perspective it often seems that we are way too dependent on America when we don't have to be and way too responsive to any and all criticism emanating from Washington. My point is that it cuts both ways. I honestly would like to find a way for the two countries to remain great friends but not be so politically entangled, to use your choice of words. I think, though, during the current war on Islamic radical terrorism that is unlikely to happen.
We had better have better intelligence than a few Debka articles if we decide to invade Syria to find the WMD.
I will point out that Israeli intelligence claimed that Saddam Hussein was "contained" and that Iran was the real threat several times about 6-9 months before the U.S. went into Iraq. While I certainly support U.S. efforts in Iraq and supported the Bush administration to go in I do think that the U.S. would be doing far better in the war on terrorism if it listened to Israeli intelligence a bit more.