THE RESULTS of nearly every survey of presidential popularity over the last 40 years show that Franklin D. Roosevelt is ranked as one of our nation’s greatest. And it doesn’t matter whether the people being surveyed are professors, businessmen, political leaders, journalists or the general public. They all say FDR is in the top three, usually alongside Abraham Lincoln and George Washington.

The acclaim for FDR — you might even call it reverence — is an interesting phenomenon, considering the way his administration intentionally slaughtered civilians in Japan and Germany during WWII.

The phenomenon is especially noteworthy because the bombing of civilians accelerated as the campaigns in Europe and the Far East were nearly over and victory over Hitler and Tojo was already a foregone conclusion. Furthermore, as German and Japanese air power was reduced to almost nothing, making the fierce air-to-air battles of the early part of the war a thing of the past, the bombing of cities became a simple matter of loading planes with fuel and bombs and giving the crews their targets.

Dresden, for example, was carpet bombed by the Roosevelt administration on February 13-15, 1945, just twelve weeks before Hitler’s suicide and Germany’s surrender. The city was destroyed, with at least 25,000 people blown to bits, burned alive or crushed by falling buildings. The vast majority of the dead were civilians who were killed in their homes, and most of these were women, children the elderly.

Tokyo suffered a similar fate in March and April 1945, only a few months before Japan surrendered. In just one raid (March 9-10), about 300 B-29s from the U.S. Army Air Forces firebombed Tokyo, destroying 25 percent of the city and mercilessly killing at least 100,000 helpless civilians.

In fact, during the last year of the war, more than 80 German and Japanese cities were bombed by FDR’s war department. Before he died on April 12, 1945, Roosevelt authorized the killing of at least a half-million noncombatants.

We do not mention these facts to question Roosevelt’s morality or to cast doubt on his place in history, but rather to provide some context for a story in the national news this week: That President Obama’s justice department has begun a criminal investigation of the CIA for its conduct interrogating terror suspects during the Bush administration. The possible “crimes” include the following:

- Telling the mastermind of 9/11 his family would be harmed if he didn’t disclose details of other terrorist attacks planned against the U.S.

- Staging a mock execution to make a suspected terrorist think he might suffer the same fate

- Intimidating suspected terrorists by showing them a handgun and operating a power drill near their bodies

- Blowing cigarette smoke into prisoners’ faces to make them vomit.

Yes, all these heinous deeds made the front page of the New York Times on Tuesday, which was the day after the launching of the criminal investigation was announced by Attorney General Eric Holder, with the concurrence of President Barack Obama. Presumably, both these men hold President Roosevelt in high esteem.

Can somebody explain how it’s possible to revere a man who was responsible for inflicting incineration and dismemberment on 500,000 civilians only a few decades ago, while considering prosecution of numerous CIA operatives for being impolite to a terrorist in 2003?