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Originally Posted by Morthoron
Yes, the deepest pits of Angband remained, but there was a concerted effort to destroy the edifice. The Valar didn't just leave without doing a cursory bit of demolition. The Valar's bad habit was doing everything half-assed.
Hmmm...and then there is Galadriel. She seems to have escaped the multitude of mistakes made by her more 'hasty' counterparts within the Noldor race: she spurns Feanor; she eschews the violence and murder rampant in the Kin Slaying, yet still follows her objective of finding greater realms to rule; she ingratiates herself to Melian and learns wisdom in Doriath when most other Noldor are forbidden to enter the Girdled Realm; she sees through Annatar's disguise and rejects him, whereas Celebrimbor greedily accepts the veiled Sauron; she welcomes Gandalf and wisely puts him ahead of Saruman in council; she rejects the Ring even when it is offered to her freely.
All this seeming wisdom, savvy and common sense, and yet she makes such a glaring error? And both Gandalf and Elrond with her on the White Council -- supposed wisdom personified in Middle-earth -- and not enough sense between them to destroy Dol Guldur when it has been overrun by an army?
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To all this I say only: Yes, from my part, yes, not enough sense. Even Gandalf and Galadriel could not persuade the Council to attack Dol Guldur earlier, as we are reminded of (and the history would have taken a very different course). I can also imagine Gandalf was in a hurry to Erebor when the deed was done, Saruman did not perhaps get his hands dirty, and Galadriel - who knows. Why couldn't she just have "torn down its walls and laid bare its pits"? I am pretty sure even after the War of the Ring, she did it by herself, not with the help of Elven sappers and explosives. No, for some reason - we don't know why - she simply didn't do that even then. But this thing, for me, is not an evidence for whether the Council had or whether it had not any army with them there. So,
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As Shakespeare would say, 'Ah, there's the rub!' I reiterate, there was no army, Dol Guldur was not overrun and controlled by the White Council
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Certainly not controlled, that would be pretty overstretching it, but not destroyed either, right. It's a similar course of events as in Mordor's border forts, when "the evil crept out of Gorgoroth" and overtook the garrison of Narchost, Carchost and the Tower of Cirith Ungol - and later, Minas Morgul itself. (Only with the difference that I doubt there were any Elves left in Dol Guldur to guard it, that sounds pretty weird - just imagine it. The evil just returned into an empty fortress, which was left there.) But I believe, in contrary to you, that the Council HAD theoretically the power do destroy Dol Guldur, only they simply didn't do it. Or maybe they did not have the power right at the moment they came there (being exhausted from the battle, the wizards using all their spell slots...
), but they still had plenty time to do it "later", after everybody had time, but they simply, as it goes, procrastinated to the point that Sauron's forces actually returned.
Still, the point of it is: I don't see the non-destruction of Dol Guldur as an argument for the assumption that there was no army there. In all honesty, even a commando of a hundred Wood Elves would have a problem with destroying the walls of Dol Guldur - what would they do, shoot at the bricks with arrows?