I also think that Sauron wanted a 'clean' victory. I see him not as a rogue, bent on burning the whole place down, but as an evil but brilliant tactician and strategist. Instead of sending over yet another plague (the first already did its work well enough), he went for more conventional means to subdue his conquests. Sauron also used psychic biowarfare in the cowl of the Nine.
This more clean warfare would leave more whole survivors, which, methinks, he may have had other plans for.
__________________
There is naught that you can do, other than to resist, with hope or without it.
|