$.ajax and the options url and type

$.ajax and the options url and type


Took me quite a while before I realised why this does not work as I
intended:
$.ajax({
    url: 'script.php?op=something',
    data: {data : 'something'},
    type: 'POST',
    dataType: 'text',
    timeout: 10000,
    error: function(XMLHttpRequest, textStatus, errorThrown) {
        alert(textStatus);
    },
    success: function(data, textStatus) {
        alert(textStatus);
    }
});
The intention was that script.php would fork into different actions
depending on $_GET['op']. But what I found out was that jQuery took
appended the parameters from the url into $_POST.
Is this the intended behaviour? if so then it's quite puzzling, or is
this a bug? can I make a somekind of workaround, cause I really would
like to use both $_GET and $_POST variables in my scripts.