Basically it's used to better distinguish actions/privileges.
Idempotent methods and web applications
Methods PUT and DELETE are defined to
be idempotent, meaning that multiple
identical requests should have the
same effect as a single request.
Methods GET, HEAD, OPTIONS and TRACE,
being prescribed as safe, should also
be idempotent, as HTTP is a stateless
protocol. By contrast, the POST method
is not necessarily idempotent, and
therefore sending an identical POST
request multiple times may further
affect state or cause further side
effects (such as financial
transactions). In some cases this may
be desirable, but in other cases this
could be due to an accident, such as
when a user does not realize that
their action will result in sending
another request, or they did not
receive adequate feedback that their
first request was successful. While
web browsers may show alert dialog
boxes to warn users in some cases
where reloading a page may re-submit a
POST request, it is generally up to
the web application to handle cases
where a POST request should not be
submitted more than once. Note that
whether a method is idempotent is not
enforced by the protocol or web
server. It is perfectly possible to
write a web application in which (for
example) a database insert or other
non-idempotent action is triggered by
a GET or other request. Ignoring this
recommendation, however, may result in
undesirable consequences if a user
agent assumes that repeating the same
request is safe when it isn't.
via wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypertext_Transfer_Protocol#Request_methods