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Thank to all of you for viewing this thread, because I hoped it would help others as well as myself. (I apologize for the length of this reply, but I have been dwelling on this subject quite a bit lately.)

There is a link here to a PDF if anyone wants it, I find it a bit easier to read:
Download Flynn Timeline

I undertook this because I felt like I was missing something. There are a lot of aspects and factors that made it hard to get my arms around it, and I feel that this is a historic time with potential to register as great or terrible.

And I am living through it. I feel it in my heart that these events centered around this man are the jewel that the workings of history are moving upon. Important and significant history.

Because of that, I feel a responsibility to understand these events as best I can and be informed by them. I had the feeling that I was approaching this in the wrong fashion (for me) and came to realize that it was the sequencing of events that was missing. The sequence was there for me to see (dates are dates) but I didn't have context, nor how the timing was important.

So I had to focus on that, and I thought I could see it better. I don't have any doubt other people could see the thing without that emphasis on the timing, I just needed it.

Anyway, I set out to do that and found there was another element I was unconsciously struggling with, and when another Freeper contacted me to ask why Obama and his fellow travelers were out to get Gen. Flynn and why they hated him so much, I saw that was important to my understanding.

The whole affair seemed so...irrational to me. (Now, I know they are leftists and I don’t have any expectation of rationality from them, but to risk everything to squash someone they didn’t like, well...that just made no sense to me at all...just because they didn’t like him?)

I have been watching it closely for several years and it has been an interesting transition for me and is one of the reasons I am interested in understanding it. I fell into the trap set by the Obama Administration working in concert with the media.

And I should have seen it, but there I was, reacting in just the way they hoped people would, and I should have known better. So I have to see where I failed to think for myself.

When I first heard of this (that Flynn was fired because “he lied to Vice President Pence”) I thought that was pretty stupid of Flynn, showed poor judgement, and I don’t recall having much more of an impression than “WTF, can’t Trump make a good choice on anyone?” After all, if the guy lied (and how could I argue with that because the FBI had transcripts of the call?) then...I couldn’t blame Trump for firing him. And I read all kinds of news articles talking about the issues with Flynn summarized in this Wikipedia entry which I have chosen to include for a specific reason:

From Wikipedia: “...Colleagues were concerned with Flynn’s chaotic management style and increasingly hard-edged views about counterterrorism, and his superiors viewed him as insubordinate, according to Pentagon officials. In mid-2014, his two-year term at the DIA was not extended...

...On April 30, 2014, Flynn announced his retirement effective later that year, about a year earlier than he had been scheduled to leave his position. He was reportedly effectively forced out of the DIA after clashing with superiors over his allegedly chaotic management style and vision for the agency.[ In a private e-mail that was leaked online, Colin Powell said he had heard in the DIA (apparently from later DIA director Vincent R. Stewart) that Flynn was fired because he was “abusive with staff, didn’t listen, worked against policy, bad management, etc.” According to The New York Times, Flynn exhibited a loose relationship with the truth, leading his subordinates to refer to Flynn’s repeated dubious assertions as “Flynn facts”.

I remembered hearing all this at the time, and thought that the guy was problematic “if any of that was true”. Just a bad choice by Trump. That was my thought process at the time.

It never occurred to me that any of it could be slander or a hit piece. I don’t even follow the media accounts of anything, and I discount reflexively anything they say. If they say the sky is blue, I would look up before even considering it.

Additionally, there is the political bloodsport of the character assassination variety, which the Left seems to lean so heavily on To me, it seems quite reminiscent of Soviet treatment of their political enemies. Complete with the organs of the government being brought into play, accusations of mental illness and nearly every single epithet they could manage to contrive especially the accusations of treason. The show trials certainly do complete the picture.

In retrospect, I did fall prey to the leftist machinations on this, because...well, I do and always have had the capability to be a dumb ass.

In reality, there was nothing wrong with Lt. General Michael Flynn. Not only was there nothing wrong with him, he was the right person in the right job in an administration that has turned out the way Trump’s has. They could have used him, and used him well.

And that is one of the things that makes me angriest.

In these times, we needed a smart, tough, experienced person who intimately understood intelligence, its acquisition, analysis, byzantine bureaucratic navigation channels, AND ITS PITFALLS. Our country SHOULD have reaped the benefits of someone like him as Director of National Intelligence. He would have made us safer, and he would have better ensured that the people who wish us ill would have had appropriate action taken against them.

Instead (as Lee Smith laid out comprehensively in his superb article at https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/russiagate-obama-iran) the left engaged in a smear campaign (fully coordinated with a willing and compliant Leftist media) against General Flynn beginning as far back as 2014 but most likely even further back, and brought the tools of the government to bear on him, which are the subject of this entire thread I posted.

He had to be destroyed. Why?

FIRST: The main reason: as Lee Smith put it, Obama saw Flynn as a signal threat to his legacy, which was rooted in his July 2015 nuclear agreement with Iran—the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). That was his crown jewel of his foreign policy, his legacy in a nutshell. It had to be protected at all costs. That is what is important to Obama.
SECOND: Nearly everyone did have the knives out for Flynn, “especially the FBI. As former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Pentagon’s spy service, and a career intelligence officer, Flynn knew how and where to find the documentary evidence of the FBI’s illegal spying operation buried in the agency’s classified files—and the FBI had reason to be terrified of the new president’s anger.” in the words of Lee Smith.
THIRD: Flynn gave vocal and public notice that in his role with the Trump Administration, he was going to call the Intelligence Community to account for their failures, justify their missions, and, as Lee Smith stated, “Flynn told friends and colleagues he was going to make the entire senior intelligence service hand in their resignations and then detail why their work was vital to national security. Flynn knew the USIC well enough to know that thousands of higher-level bureaucrats wouldn’t make the cut.”

All of those things put together explain just why Flynn had to be destroyed. And they set out to do it.