The Obama administration, focused on completing a nuclear deal with Iran and eager to minimize direct U.S. involvement in the latest Iraq war, has played down the militia menace. While not supporting the attack on Tikrit with airstrikes, senior officials have characterized it as a positive development. Such statements suppose that a force including commanders and units on the State Department’s global terrorism list and steered by an Iranian general who previously directed attacks on U.S. troops will somehow advance the aim of reconstructing a multiethnic Iraq.
In fact, a new report from Human Rights Watch documents how Shiite militias have pursued a brutal scorched-earth policy in areas already liberated from the Islamic State. After U.S. airstrikes drove Islamic State forces out of the town of Amerli, in northeastern Iraq, late last summer, the militias went on a sectarian rampage, burning and bulldozing thousands of homes and other buildings in dozens of Sunni villages. The intent was to violently alter the demography of once ethnically diverse areas so that Shiites could dominate them.

On the topic of human rights abuses (War Crimes), we'll note this Tweet:

In other violence,   Vivian Salama (AP) reports 3 Baghdad bombings have left 19 people dead and thirty-six injured.