Headline grabbing it may be, but it requires a peculiarly singular view of the evidence to sustain his assertion.
All told, it is questionable whether the governing parties will sustain their assertion that the Gaza operation was a brilliant success.
But in order to sustain his assertion that cholesterol causes heart attacks, he needed to identify an agent that raises its levels in the blood – he landed on saturated fats.
As a poster on the Occupywallstreet.com forum who goes by "apacheman" put it, "There is no moral, ethical, or legal ground to sustain an assertion of the right to unlimited wealth for an individual or corporation.
Now, football's good name cannot be sustained by the feeble assertion that a referee is the sole arbiter of something as appalling as the De Jong tackle once he claims to have seen it.
It also lacks the cogency and sociological depth of Ms. Garber's 1992 study of cross-dressing ("Vested Interests: Cross-Dressing and Cultural Anxiety"), substituting anecdotes and assertions for sustained analysis.
Through skillful use of small details, Miller sustains her repeated assertion that the future Betsy Ross was often "only a handshake away" from the men who made the Revolution.
There was only the most general sketch of a second term agenda, only a relatively cursory defense of the president's economic stewardship, and mostly assertions, rather than sustained arguments, to back up his claim that the country is headed (slowly) in the right direction.
In tracking the experience, at the remove of half a century, of a girl as unsophisticated and simple as Eilis — a girl who permits herself no extremes of temperament, who accords herself no right to self-assertion — Toibin exercises sustained subtlety and touching respect.
Some of Detzner's assertions could be sustained through observable physical evidence: he had reportedly wasted to a mere 40 kg while roaming in the bush, which should not have happened, some supporters claimed, if he had indeed been under the protection of Keyser and Thiele.
