From Etch onward, it is recommended that users use aptitude instead of apt-get.  Aptitude has advanced dependency handling that can avoid some serious problems in unusual situations. 

From the official debian documentation http://www.debian.org/releases/stable/i386/release-notes/ch-whats-new.en.html#s-pkgmgmt:

" The preferred program for package management from the command line is aptitude, which can perform the same package management functions as apt-get and has proven to be better at dependency resolution."