Feigned fleeing or farciful forestalling?

[Legate of Amon Lanc]

Originally Posted by Morthoron

To me, it seems obvious that Saruman was already duplicitous, long forestalling the White Council's attack on Amon Lanc for his personal reasons. Perhaps the 'devices' Saruman used were just as feigned as was Sauron fleeing, and the two had already worked out an 'exit strategy' together. Both were in possession of the palantiri at the time.

No, please, this is nonsense. Saruman had no real connection to Sauron until the end of the millenium, when he dared to look into the Palantír. He did not look into it until then! And he did not, for Eru's sake, work together with Sauron! I may jump out of my skin when I hear things like that, sorry, but Saruman was a proud, independant traitor! And if you look just into the Tale of the Years, it will become clear to you. There is this date when Saruman looked into the Palantír, as mentioned above, and there is also the note, I believe, that Saruman's intentions to attack Dol Guldur were to prevent Sauron from searching on the Gladden Fields (before, he wanted to keep him there just for the same reason, in hope to find the Ring if it attempted to get back to its Master).

As far as the phrase "the Council put forth its strength and drove the evil out of Mirkwood", I don't consider this to infer an army; rather, it seems to me more likely the White Council put forth their innate powers to drive Sauron forth, much like Galadriel did at the end of the War of the Ring when she laid bare the pits of Dol Guldur and toppled its tower.

Well yes, but even the end of the War of the Ring involved battles with the Orcs and spiders and whatever was in Mirkwood by that time. So, I am not easy to dismiss the possibility of at least an elven commando being around there. I have to look at Rumil's link yet (thanks for it, by the way!), but at least I am certain in the discussion I linked to in my above post, there was something said about reasons for that.