the 50,000 iraqi civilians comes from the way that many sources come up with their numbers. they come up with a statistic that says its 40% more likely for an iraqi civilian to die in iraq than before the war(95% ci 1-400) &lt;this is just an example so it may not add up, im just trying to show you how it is done&gt;.. this part &lt;(95% ci 1-400)&gt; means that they are 95% sure that the liklihood of an iraqi citizen dying is somewhere betweem 1 to 400% higher than before the war, so they average 40.