Time travel in The Terminator

More importantly, remember:

---that rule only applies to the first movie.

--trying to apply logic to Terminator time travel is futile. Think of the whole basis of the movies. Humans are about to penetrate Skynet, so Skynet sends a terminator back to kill Sarah. Humans get in, and send back Kyle. That failed, so Skynet sent back the T-1000. But, if humans were there, how did the t-1000 get sent back? Also, wouldn't the fact that John Connor existed mean that the t-800 failed? So why bother sending him back?

And you forgot: how would Skynet know the first one failed so that it needed to send the t1000? And for that matter (same with T3), how did the humans know they needed to send the reprogrammed t800, much less when in time to send it?