Block that metaphor!

In this article about a civilian contractor's travails in Iraq and his unhappy return home, his wife comments:

"He brought the war home," Sylvia said. "His character changed. He is at the bottom of the barrel."

Added to that is the description of the burly truckers tying each other up so they could practice escaping. They also obsessed with videos of beheaded hostages, calculating it took "between seven and fifteen seconds" for a beheaded man to die.