Debian /etc/hosts Behavior

[ms419@freezone.co.uk]

I just spent a painful couple of days trying to figure out why Kerberos 
authentication was broken. DNS checked out, but it turns out "hostname 
-f" was only returning the short hostname, due to the following entry 
in "/etc/hosts":
---
127.0.0.1	kas	localhost
---
This realized, it was a quick fix:
---
127.0.0.1	localhost
---

If this entry prevents "hostname -f" and "hostname -d" from working, 
why does Debian create it?

Thanks!

Jack